ИСТИНА

Today cartography extends far from terrestrial limits. It can be applied to the planets of the Solar System, their satellites, asteroids, and nuclei of comets. The mapping of bodies with irregular shapes will play an increasingly important role in different fields of planetary science. The irregularly – shaped bodies are those smaller than a few hundred kilometers in diameter. This class of bodies exists primarily in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupeter and the Kuiper belt beyond Pluto. Some are found as small satellites of the planets. Their orbits can intersect the orbits of planets, including Mars, Earth, Venus and even Mercury. The Near-Earth Asteroids are those which make close approaches to Earth. In the last two years the "NEAR-Shoemaker" spacecraft has transmitted images of asteroid 433 Eros to the Earth. The main goal was to obtain images covering the whole surface of the body, which gives us the opportunity of global mapping. The use of a regular surface such as a sphere, ellipsoid or triaxial ellipsoid as a reference surface does not accurately depict the form and surface features of an irregularly – shaped celestial body. Each body has a unique form, a complex morphology which does not comply with ideal regular surfaces. For all these reasons we need to develop cartographic projections taking into account the complex surface form of irregular celestial bodies. There are a lot of cartographic and non-cartographical problems on this way