North of 60 Mining News - The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North

CopperBank Resources Corp. Jan. 22 said a 3D radar model carried out by Auracle Geospatial Science Inc. has turned up some interesting new targets for the 2018 drill programs at the company's Pyramid and San Diego Bay copper-gold projects on the Alaska Peninsula.

Auracle has developed a system that transforms geospatial data captured from satellites, drones, and aircraft into high-resolution visual information about the earth.

By combining radar and optical satellite data, the proprietary mapping system developed by Auracle has the ability to discern geological information below vegetation, ground cover, water, ice, rocks, and soils.

"Auracle's technology works at, near and under the earth's surface enabling it to see through things that no other technology can claim," explains Auracle President and CEO David McLelland.

After discussing this technology with Auracle last year, CopperBank quickly realized the potential benefits of applying such a radar model study to gaining a better understanding of the hidden structures across the 65,000 acres of land that make up the company's Pyramid and San Diego Bay properties.

Using its exclusive algorithms, Auracle extracted strike and dip measurements of the different interpreted structures and produced a series of maps including apparent resistivity, digital elevation model, and structure analysis. This new information will help CopperBank's technical team to design future exploration programs for both projects.

CopperBank, which plans to drill both Pyramid and San Diego Bay this summer, said the zones of high fracturing are of particular interest as they reflect ground preparation to mineralization and possible nearby intrusion.

The shallow dips of the structures will also be the object of field verification as this could have an impact on the resource model until now believed to be mainly vertical.

Pyramid hosts a large porphyry deposit on the Alaska Peninsula with a 122.5-million-metric-ton historical inferred resource averaging 0.41 percent (1.1 billion pounds) copper, 0.1 grams per metric ton (389,000 ounces) gold and 0.021 percent (56.7 million lbs.) molybdenum.

This year, CopperBank drilled 13 holes aimed at upgrading and expanding this resource.

A 15-square-mile red-stained anomaly from the pervasive alteration at San Diego Bay, situated about 4.5 miles east of Pyramid, indicates the potential of another large porphyry system near or potentially connecting to Pyramid.

Limited exploration completed in the past has turned up some interesting results at San Diego Bay, including rock samples with grades as high as 16 percent copper and more than 1 g/t gold.

A reconnaissance exploration program carried out at San Diego Bay in 2017 investigated the areas of promising copper and gold values with prospecting and soil sampling.

CopperBank and Auracle believe the results from the hyperspectral survey will help identify targets for future exploration on both projects.

"We believe that the new information derived from our Auracle system will play an important role in CopperBank's go forward exploration program," said McLelland.

"The new data will allow our technical team to better understand the control of mineralization within the vast color anomaly present over the two projects," said CopperBank Executive Chairman Gianni Kovacevic. "Zones of interest are standing out that have never been tested at depth."

–SHANE LASLEY