Application of space borne cartographic camera for thematic mapping

A remote sensing experiment ‘TERRA’ was conducted during the first Indo-Soviet joint manned space flight. Under this experiment aerial photographs of the Indian terrain were taken using fixed cameras like MKF-6 and KATE-140 and hand held cameras like Hasselblad 500 EL/M and Practika B-200. In order to find out the positional accuracy of features identifiable on TERRA photographs, an experiment was carried out photogrammetrically using a stereopair of KATE-140 photographs. Analog as well as analytical stereo-plotter were used. A simple technique of comparing the known ground coordinates of various well defined ground features identifiable both on map as well as on stereo model, with the coordinate calculated from the stereopair observation was adopted. Due to the non availability of the actual coordinates of ground details/features and limitations of identifications of such ground details, used for observation in the present study, the results obtained have indicated that the residual errors are random in nature and not systematic. The results showed that such space borne aerial photographs like KATE-140, can be used for obtaining desired cartographic accuracy for the preparation of topographical as well as other thematic maps on scale 1:250,000 and smaller.