Rossing Mountain - Arandis, Namibia

This live camera looks across the rocky desert landscape of the Namib Desert near Arandis, a small mining town in the Erongo Region of western Namibia, approximately 60 kilometres inland from the coastal city of Swakopmund. The camera sits near the Rössing Uranium Mine, one of the largest open-pit uranium mines in the world, operating continuously since 1976 and covering an excavation area of approximately 3 kilometres in length and 300 metres in depth.

Rössing is majority-owned by China National Uranium Corporation following a 2019 acquisition, and produces around 2,000 tonnes of uranium oxide per year, supplying nuclear power stations across Europe and Asia. The Namib Desert visible in this feed is considered the world's oldest desert, estimated at 55 million years old, and receives less than 25 millimetres of rainfall annually in the Arandis area, with moisture arriving primarily as coastal fog rolling in from the cold Benguela Current offshore.

Arandis itself was built specifically to house workers for the Rössing mine and has a permanent population of around 8,000 people. The Swakopmund Flying School, near which this camera is positioned, operates light aircraft training from a airstrip in this desert corridor, taking advantage of the consistent atmospheric conditions created by the meeting of cold Atlantic air and the hot Namib interior.

Did You Know? The Namib Desert is the oldest desert on earth at an estimated 55 million years old, predating the Sahara by tens of millions of years and receiving so little rain that some riverbeds in the region have been dry for decades.

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