to the plans of the Working group of the socialist countries 
concerning Remote-sensing, the group which operates within the 
framework of the "Intercosmos" programme. It has been compiled 
through interpretation results of the images taken by the MKF-6 
camera from the "Soyuz-22" spaceship of the areas in the nothern 
and central part of GDR and of the naturally and economically 
diverse USSR's areas, including the North-eastern Caspian, the 
Southern and Northern Baikal regions, the Okhotsk region, Central 
Yakutia, South-eastern Kazakhstan and Central Asia. 
In September, I976, within the framework of the interna- 
tional cooperation programme "Intercosmos", the specialists of 
the Soviet Union and GDR carried out together the space experi- 
ment "Raduga", in the course of which the USSR cosmonauts 
V.F,Bikovskiy and V.V.Aksenov, in the 8-day flight of the "Soyus- 
22" spaceship, obtained more than 2500 multiband photographs of 
the earth surface, The photography was taken by the multiband 
Space camera MKF-6, developed jointly by the experts of the 
people's enterprise "Karl Zeiss Iena", GDR, and the Institute of 
Space Research, USSR Academy of Sciences; and manufactured in 
GDR. The multiband MKF-6 photography was also performed from 
aircraft-laboratories and then from "Saliut-6", a piloted orbital 
station, Simultaneously with the MKF-6 apparatus, the multi- 
channel synthesizing MSP-4 projector was developed, which has 
made it possible to produce high-quality colour synthesized 
images, now widely used in scientific, practical and educational 
work, 
The atlas, based upon the materials of this space 
experiment to have included multiband aerial and space images 
and image-based maps, demonstrates through typical examples the 
applicational scope of multiband aerial and space photography 
data in various studis of the natural environment, in planning 
and operational management of economic activities and for numerous 
branches of thematic mapping. 
Based upon the selective results of one of the numerous 
space experiments, the atlas is an evidence of the extreme 
variety of ways effective application of space photography can 
follow; it also provides methodical advice on such an application 
in a number of branches of geographical studies and thematic 
mapping. All the maps, included in the atlas and compiled through 
multiband space images, are either original productions of a new 
type or they show the ways of improving thematic maps using space 
photography data. 
The atlas can serve as a scientific-methodical guidance in 
the methods of thematic interpretation of multiband aerial and 
Space images, largely those concerned with their visuel inter- 
pretation. 
Aerial and space methods of Earth exploration are complex 
and interdisciplinary in principle, Each image is usually fit 
for a multi-purpose application in various directions of Earth 
studies. This is supported by the regional-thematic structure of 
the atlas, in which for each photograph there is the interpreta- 
tion technique presented in those directions where it is the most 
effective. 
46 
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