• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.305-318
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• 2002

We have constructed two flight models of airglow photometer system (AGP) to be onboard Korea Sounding Rocket-III (KSR-III) for detection of MUV dayglow above the Korean peninsular. The AGP system is designed to detect dayglow emissions of OI 2972${\AA}$, $N_2$ VK(0,6) 2780${\AA}$, $N_2$ 2PG 3150${\AA}$ and background 3070${\AA}$ toward the horizon at altitudes between 100 km and 300 km. The AGP system consists of a photometer body, a baffle an electronic control unit and a battery unit. The MUV dayglow emissions enter through a narrow band interference filter and focusing lens of the photometer, which contains an ultraviolet sensitive photomultiplier tube. The photometer is equipped with an in-flight calibration light source on a circular plane that will rotate at the rocket's apogee. A bane tube is installed at the entry of the photometer in order to block strong scattering lights from the lower atmosphere. We have carried out laboratory measurements of sensitivity and in-flight calibration light source for the AGP flight models. Although absolute sensitivities of the AGP flight models could not be determined in the country, relative sensitivities among channels are well measured so that observation data during rocket flight in the future can be analyzed with confidence.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.117-129
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• 2020

In a Satellite communication system, a link budget analysis is the detailed investigation of signal gains and losses moving through a channel from a sender to receiver. It inspects the fading of passed on data signal waves due to the process of spreading or propagation, including transmitter and receiver antenna gains, feeder cables, and related losses. The extent of the proposed tool is to make an effective, efficient, and user-friendly approach to calculate link budget analysis. It is also related to the satellite communication correlation framework by building up a graphical interface link analysis tool utilizing STK^® software with the interface of C# programming. It provides better kinds of graphical display techniques, exporting and importing data files, printing link information, access data, azimuth-elevation-range (AER), and simulation is also possible at once. The components of the link budget analysis tool include transmitter gain, effective isotropic radiated power (EIRP), free space loss, propagation loss, frequency Doppler shift, flux density, link margin, elevation plot, etc. This tool can be useful for amateur users (e.g., CubeSat developers in the universities) or nanosat developers who may not know about the RF communication system of the satellite and the orbital mechanics (e.g., orbit propagators) principle used in the satellite link analysis.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.36 no.3
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• pp.181-186
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• 2019

The attitude information of spacecraft can be obtained by the sensors attached to it using a star tracker, three-axis magnetometer, three-axis gyroscope, and a global positioning signal receiver. By using these sensors, the spacecraft can be maneuvered by actuators that generate torques. In particular, electromagnetic-torque bars can be used for attitude control and as a momentum-canceling instrument. The spacecraft momentum can be created by the current through the electrical circuits and coils. Thus, the current around the electromagnetic-torque bars is a critical factor for precisely controlling the spacecraft. In connection with these concerns, a solar-cell array can be considered to prevent generation of a magnetic dipole moment because the solar-cell array can introduce a large amount of current through the electrical wires. The maximum value of a magnetic dipole moment that cannot affect precise control is $0.25A{\cdot}m^2$, which takes into account the current that flows through the reaction-wheel assembly and the magnetic-torque current. In this study, we designed a 300-W solar cell array and presented an optimal wire-routing method to minimize the magnetic dipole moment for space applications. We verified our proposed method by simulation.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.35 no.1
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• pp.39-46
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• 2018

In this study, the performance of ranging techniques for the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO) space communication system is investigated. KPLO is the first lunar mission of Korea, and pseudo-noise (PN) ranging will be used to support the mission along with sequential ranging. We compared the performance of both ranging techniques using the criteria of accuracy, acquisition probability, and measurement time. First, we investigated the end-to-end accuracy error of a ranging technique incorporating all sources of errors such as from ground stations and the spacecraft communication system. This study demonstrates that increasing the clock frequency of the ranging system is not required when the dominant factor of accuracy error is independent of the thermal noise of the ranging technique being used in the system. Based on the understanding of ranging accuracy, the measurement time of PN and sequential ranging are further investigated and compared, while both techniques satisfied the accuracy and acquisition requirements. We demonstrated that PN ranging performed better than sequential ranging in the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regime where KPLO will be operating, and we found that the T2B (weighted-voting balanced Tausworthe, voting v = 2) code is the best choice among the PN codes available for the KPLO mission.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.131-140
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• 2014

Lava caves could be useful as outposts for the human exploration of the Moon. Lava caves or lava tubes are formed when the external surface of the lava flows cools more quickly to make a hardened crust over subsurface lava flows. The lava flow eventually ceases and drains out of the tube, leaving an empty space. The frail part of the ceiling of lava tube could collapse to expose the entrance to the lava tubes which is called a pit crater. Several pit craters with the diameter of around 100 meters have been found by analyzing the data of SELENE and LRO lunar missions. It is hard to use these pit craters for outposts since these are too large in scale. In this study, small scale pit craters which are fit for outposts have been investigated using the NAC image data of LROC. Several topographic patterns which are believed to be lunar caves have been found and the similar pit craters of the Earth were compared and analyzed to identify caves. For this analysis, the image data of satellites and aerial photographs are collected and classified to construct a database. Several pit craters analogous to lunar pit craters were derived and a morphological pit crater model was generated using the 3D printer based on this database.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.99-103
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• 2017

The sun is not equally bright over the whole sphere, but rather is darkened toward the limb. This effect is well-known as limb darkening. The limb darkening coefficient is defined by the ratio of the center intensity to limb intensity. In this study, we calculate the limb darkening coefficient using the photospheric intensity estimated from solar images taken by solar and helispheric observatory (SOHO) and solar dynamics observatory (SDO). The photospheric intensity data cover almost two solar cycles from May 1996 to December 2016. The limb darkening coefficient for a size of 0.9 diameter is about 0.69 and this value is consistent with solar limb darkening. The limb darkening coefficient estimated from SOHO shows a temporal increase at solar maximum and a gradual increase since the solar minimum of 2008. The limb darkening coefficient estimated from SDO shows a constant value of about 0.65 and a decreasing trend since 2014. The increase in the coefficient reflects the effect of weakened solar activity. However, the decrease since 2014 is caused by the aging effect.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.73-81
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• 2014

A package of space science instruments, dubbed the Instruments for the Study of Space Storms (ISSS), is proposed for the Next Generation Small Satellite-1 (NEXTSat-1), which is scheduled for launch in May 2016. This paper describes the instrument designs and science missions of the ISSS. The ISSS configuration in NEXTSat-1 is as follows: the space radiation monitoring instruments consist of medium energy particle detector (MEPD) and high energy particle detector (HEPD); the space plasma instruments consist of a Langmuir probe (LP), a retarding potential analyzer (RPA), and an ion drift meter (IDM). The space radiation monitoring instruments (MEPD and HEPD) measure electrons and protons in parallel and perpendicular directions to the geomagnetic field in the sub-auroral region, and they have a minimum time resolution of 50 msec for locating the region of the particle interactions with whistler mode waves and electromagnetic ion cyclotron (EMIC) waves. The MEPD measures electrons and protons with energies of tens of keV to ~400 keV, and the HEPD measures electrons with energies of ~100 keV to > ~1 MeV and protons with energies of ~10 MeV. The space plasma instruments (LP, RPA, and IDM) observe irregularities in the low altitude ionosphere, and the results will be compared with the scintillations of the GPS signals. In particular, the LP is designed to have a sampling rate of 50 Hz in order to detect these small-scale irregularities.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.1-6
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• 2002

Recently, one interesting possibility is proposed that a magnetar can be a progenitor of short and hard gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). If this is true, one may expect that the short and hard GRBs, at least some of GRBs in this class, are distributed in the Euclidean space and that the angular position of these GRBs is correlated with galaxy clusters. Even though it is reported that the correlation is statistically marginal, the observed value of < $V/V_{max}$ > deviates from the Euclidean value. The latter fact is often used as evidence against a local extragalactic origin for short GRB class. We demonstrate that GRB sample of which the value of < $V/V_{max}$ > deviates from the Euclidean value can be spatially confined within the low value of z. We select very short bursts (TgO < 0.3 sec) from the BATSE 4B catalog. The value of < $V/V_{max}$ > of the short bursts is 0.4459. Considering a conic-beam and a cylindrical beam for the luminosity function, we deduce the corresponding spatial distribution of the GRB sources. We also calculate the fraction of bursts whose redshifts are larger than a certain redshift z', i.e. f>z'. We find that GRBs may be distributed near to us, despite the non-Euclidean value of < $V/V_{max}$ >. A broad and uniform beam pattern seems compatible with the magnetar model in that the magnetar model requires a small $z_{max}$.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.407-411
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• 2012

Space-borne remote sensing is an effective and inexpensive way to identify crop fields and detect the crop condition. We examined the multi-temporal spectral characteristics of rice fields in South Korea to detect their phenological development and condition. These rice fields are compact, small-scale parcels of land. For the analysis, moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) and RapidEye images acquired in 2011 were used. The annual spectral tendencies of different crop types could be detected using MODIS data because of its high temporal resolution, despite its relatively low spatial resolution. A comparison between MODIS and RapidEye showed that the spectral characteristics changed with the spatial resolution. The vegetation index (VI) derived from MODIS revealed more moderate values among different land-cover types than the index derived from RapidEye. Additionally, an analysis of various VIs using RapidEye satellite data showed that the VI adopting the red edge band reflected crop conditions better than the traditionally used normalized difference VI.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.109-120
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• 2004

STSAT-1 was launched on sep. 2003 with the main payload of Far Ultra-violet Imaging Spectrograph(FIMS). The mission of FIMS is to observe universe and aurora. In this paper, we suggest a simple and reliable strategy adopted in STSAT-1 to synchronize time between On-board Computer(OBC) and FIMS. For the characteristics of STSAT-1, this strategy is devised to maintain reliability of satellite system and to reduce implementation cost by using minimized electronic circuits. We suggested two methods with different synchronization resolutions to cope with unexpected faults in space. The backup method with low resolution can be activated when the main has some problems.