Soyuz 22 (, Union 22) was a September 1976, Soviet crewed spaceflight. It was an Earth sciences mission using a modified Soyuz spacecraft, and was also, some observers speculated, a mission to observe NATO exercises near Norway.
The spacecraft was a refurbished Soyuz that had served as a backup for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) mission the previous year.
Cosmonauts Valery Bykovsky and Vladimir Aksyonov spent a week in orbit photographing the surface of the Earth with a specially-built camera.
Crew
Backup crew
Reserve crew
Mission highlights
Soyuz 22 was launched to orbit 15 September 1976 at the unusually high inclination of 64.75°, not used since the Voskhod program. The orbiting Salyut 5 space station was at the standard 51.7° inclination, which led some observers to conclude that this solo Soyuz mission was chiefly intended to observe NATO's Exercise Teamwork, taking place in Norway, well above 51.0° latitude and therefore outside good visual range of the space station. However, the particular camera used, an MKF-6 multispectral Carl Zeiss camera which allowed six simultaneous photographs to be taken, suggested to others that reconnaissance, if part of the mission, was a minor part of it. Soyuz 22's orbital inclination maximized ground coverage, especially of the former East Germany. There were two orbit changes within 24 hours of launch. The first came on the fourth orbit and changed the orbit to . The second, on the sixteenth orbit, circularized the orbit to .
The mission's stated 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 vehicle was the modified ASTP back-up ship. In place of the APAS-75 androgynous docking system, it carried an East German MKF-6 multispectral camera, built by Carl Zeiss-Jena.