Soyuz 22 was an earth-sciences mission using a modified Soyuz capsule that had served as a backup for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project mission the previous year. September 15 is the 258th day of the year (259th in leap years). ... 1976 is a leap year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar). ... UTC also stands for the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Coordinated Universal Time or UTC, also sometimes referred to as Zulu time, the basis for civil time, differs by an integral number of seconds from atomic time and a fractional number of seconds from UT1. ... The Baikonur Cosmodrome (Russian: Космодром Байконур, Kosmodrom Baykonur), also called Tyuratam, is the worlds oldest and largest working space launch facility. ... September 23 is the 266th day of the year (267th in leap years). ... 1976 is a leap year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar). ... Astana, estimated population 500,000 (2003, the city is very fast-growing), has been the capital of Kazakhstan since 1997. ... The Soyuz human spaceflight programme was initiated in the early 1960s as part of the manned lunar programme that was intended to put a Soviet cosmonaut on the Moon. ... The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project was the first joint flight of the US and Soviet space programs. ...

Cosmonauts Valery Bykovsky and Vladimir Aksyonov spent a week in orbit photographing the surface of the Earth with a specially-built camera. It was hoped that these observations would assist in identifying resources and assisting in economic planning. Valery Fyodorovich Bykovsky (Russian: Валерий Фёдорович Быковский; born 2 August 1934, Moscow) was a cosmonaut who flew three manned space mission space flights: Vostok 5, Soyuz 22, and Soyuz 31. ... Born in Giblitsy, Kazimov Rayon, Ryazan Oblast, Russian SFSR on February 1, 1935. ...

Mission highlights

Unusual for a Soyuz was the orbit — inclined at 64.75º — an inclination that had not been used since the Voskhod program. The reason for this was simple — it maximised the ground covereage, especially of East Germany. Voskhod (Russian: Восход, translated as Sunrise) is the name of: The Soviet Voskhod programme of human spaceflight The spacecraft used in that programme The rocket that was used to launch those spacecraft It is also: A brand of camera A brand of motorcycle This is a disambiguation page — a navigational...

The main payload was an East German built Carl Zeiss-Jena multi-spectral camera. This was mounted in the place of the androgonous docking system at the front of the Orbital Module. One cosmonaut would control the operations of the camera from inside the Orbital Module while the second changed the orientation from the Descent Module. For the historical eastern German provinces, see Historical Eastern Germany East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR), German Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR), was a Communist Party-led state that existed from 1949 to 1990 in the former Soviet occupation zone of Germany. ... Carl Zeiss Carl Zeiss (September 11, 1816 – December 3, 1888) was an optician commonly known for the company he founded, Zeiss. ...

There were two orbit changes, both within 24 hours of launch. The first on the fourth orbit changed the orbit to 280 km by 250 km and the second burn on the sixteenth orbit further circularised the orbit to one of 257 km by 251 km. Officially the objectives were to:

Check and improve scientific and technical methods and means of studying geological features of the Earth's surface in the interests of the national economies of the Soviet Union and the German Democratic Republic

The camera had six lenses (4 visible light and 2 infrared) which imaged a preselected 165-km wide strip of the Earth's surface. This meant according to the Soviets that over half a million square kilometres could be imaged in 10 minutes. East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR), German Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR), was a socialist country that existed from 1949 to 1990. ...

An interesting item of note was that at the same time as this mission NATO were conducting military exercises under the codename Exercise Teamwork in Norway. This was outside the normal inclination of the Almaz stations, and this mission could have been used to image it. The flag of NATO NATO 2002 Summit The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), sometimes called North Atlantic Alliance, Atlantic Alliance or the Western Alliance, is an international organisation for defence collaboration established in 1949, in support of the North Atlantic Treaty signed in Washington, D.C., on April 4, 1949. ... The Almaz (Алмаз - Diamond) program was a series of military space stations launched by the Soviet Union under cover of the Salyut program. ...

The first test images from the camera were of Baikal-Amur railway that was being constructed. On the third day of the mission they took photographs of Siberia to the Sea of Okhotsk in the morning and north western USSR. Sea of Okhotsk The Sea of Okhotsk (from the Russian Okhotskoe more) is a part of the western Pacific Ocean, lying between the Kamchatka Peninsula and the disputed Russo-Japanese Kurile Islands on the east, the Japanese island of Hokkaido to the south and the island of Sakhalin, the Amur...

On the fourth day to investigate the Earth's atmosphere, the crew imaged the Moon rising and setting during as they orbited the Earth. This also allowed them to see how clean or clouded the spacecrafts windows were. They also imaged Central Asia, Kazakhstan and Siberia, with the main focus on geological formations and agricultural effects.

The fifth day focused on Azerbaijan, the southern Urals, the Baikal-Amur railway again and western Siberia. At the same time a second camera was being flown on an aircraft over the same areas in order to compare the images.

The sixth day saw images of Siberia, the Northern USSR and European USSR and according to TASS, areas that had never before been `targets of space photography'.

The last full day saw a focus on East Germany, where a AN-30 aircraft was flying carrying an identical camera to the one of Soyuz 22. They also reimaged Central Asia, Kazhakstan, eastern Siberia and the south-western USSR in order to compare them with the photos from earlier in the mission.

One of the stranger tasks the crew had to accomplish was the dismantlement of the camera in order to reach the filters (blue, green, orange, red, violet and black) used. This was because they were needed to calibrate the images back on Earth. This task took them several hours to complete.

As well as imaging the Earth, during the week long mission the crew also did several biological experiments. They ran a small centrifuge in the orbital module to see how plants grew in artificial gravity. They also investigated the effects of cosmic rays passing through the eyes. This effect had first been seen by Apollo astronauts during there rest phases. They saw bright flashes when they closed their eyes. This was due to cosmic rays actually passing through the eye. Soyuz 22 also carried a small aquarium so that the crew could watch the development of fish. A laboratory centrifuge tabletop centrifuge A centrifuge is a piece of laboratory equipment that applies centrifugal force to a sample. ... Cosmic rays can loosely be defined as energetic particles originating outside of the Earth. ...

After the highly successful mission the crew took the film cassettes and other items they were returning to Earth and stowed them in the reentry module. The retrofire, reentry and landing were absolutely nominal.

The crew had imaged 30 areas with 2400 photographs. None of the cassettes were found to be faulty and all the images were of good quality. The results, it was said, would benefit experts in the fields of agriculture, cartography, mineralogy, and hydrology. Cartography or mapmaking (in Greek chartis = map and graphein = write) is the study and practice of making maps or globes. ... Mineralogy is an earth science that involves the chemistry, crystal structure, and physical (including optical) properties of minerals. ... Water covers 70% of the Earths surface. ...

Crew

• Valery Bykovsky (2)
• Vladimir Aksyonov (1)

Valery Fyodorovich Bykovsky (Russian: Валерий Фёдорович Быковский; born 2 August 1934, Moscow) was a cosmonaut who flew three manned space mission space flights: Vostok 5, Soyuz 22, and Soyuz 31. ... Born in Giblitsy, Kazimov Rayon, Ryazan Oblast, Russian SFSR on February 1, 1935. ...

Mission Parameters

• Mass: 6510 kg
• Perigee: 185 km
• Apogee: 296 km
• Inclination: 64.8°
• Period: 89.3 min

References

• What Do You Do With A Spare Spacecraft?
• Soyuz 22 at the Encyclopedia Astronautica

The Encyclopedia Astronautica is a reference web site on space travel. ...

Crew Boris Volynov (2) Vitali Zholobov (1) (1) number of spaceflights each crew member has completed, including this mission. ... The Soyuz human spaceflight programme was initiated in the early 1960s as part of the manned lunar programme that was intended to put a Soviet cosmonaut on the Moon. ... Soyuz 23 was intended to carry cosmonauts Vyacheslav Zudov and Valeri Rozhdestvenski to the Salyut 5 space station, presumably on an Almaz military mission. ...