Portal:Spaceflight/Selected article/Week 44 2011

Globus IMP instruments were spacecraft navigation instruments used in Soviet and Russian manned spacecraft. The IMP acronym stems from the Russian expression Indicator of position in flight, место полёт индикатор, but the instrument was informally, and often formally as well, referred to as the Globus. It displays the nadir of the spacecraft on a rotating, five-inch terrestrial globe. It functions as an onboard, autonomous indicator of the spacecraft's location relative to Earth coordinates. An electro-mechanical device in the tradition of complex post-WWII clocks such as master clocks, the Globus IMP instrument incorporates hundreds of mechanical components common to horology. This instrument is a mechanical computer for navigation akin to the Norden bombsight. It mechanically computes complex functions and displays its output through mechanical displacements of the globe and other indicator components. It also modulates electric signals from other instruments.

This instrument and its derivatives have been used in Soviet and Russian manned space missions ever since the world's first manned spaceflight of Yuri Gagarin through every manned Vostok, Voskhod and Soyuz mission until 2002.

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