New Methods of Steering Scientific Instruments to Point Them towards Survey Targets in the Uragan Experiment onboard the ISS

Space Experiment (SE) Uragan is focused on developing Scientific Payloads (SP) and techniques for observing various terrestrial features and phenomena. Some of the Uragan SE SP are already in operation onboard the space station, and some of them are being prepared to be sent to orbit in the near future. Unlike our country’s national orbital stations Salyut and Mir, the ISS was not designed to point the SP mounted on it towards objects under study due to the low available angular momentum of the control moment gyros installed in the US orbital segment to control the ISS attitude. This made it necessary to develop special techniques and devices for pointing the Uragan SE SP towards its targets. The paper discusses the SP pointing techniques that enable optimization of the Uragan SE program of studies onboard the ISS.