High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! 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, but the instrument is informally, and often formally as well, referred to as the Globus. It displays the nadir of the spacecraft on a rotating terrestrial globe. It functions as an on board, 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.