Igla rendezvous system unit

Igla measured range, closing speed and relative attitude from signals exchanged between the active and passive ships. Each carried a set of directional antennas, and the combination of antennas and logic could bring the vehicles together with no human involvement — on 30 October 1967 Cosmos-186 and Cosmos-188 docked this way. The system needed many antennas and required turning the whole spacecraft while searching for the target, so in the 1980s it gave way to Kurs, which works without such turns. But it was Igla that made orbital station assembly possible. On display is an instrument unit with its antenna assembly and cabling.