• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.339-348
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• 2007

KASINICS (Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute Near Infrared Camera System) is equipped with a InSb array which can observe $1-5\;{\mu}m$ bands in near-infrared. The absorption and emission by telluric water vapor becomes serious in the bands longer than $3\;{\mu}m$. We measured PWV (precipitable Water Vapor) levels above Bohyusan Optical Astronomy Observatory and Sobaeksan Optical Astronomy Observatory from July 2006 to August 2007 using the GPS PWV measurement system of KASI. We found that monthly averaged PWVs are lower than the prediction using dew-point temperature and as low as above Kitt Peak from September to February.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.45 no.11
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• pp.975-988
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• 2017

Since 2000, about 750 cubesats have been launched as of August 2017 and development and the launch of cubesat increased exponentially. Since standard of cubesat has been proposed in 1999, cubesats have grown considerably beyond the scope of education and technology verification to commercial use in the area of space exploration and earth observation, and the variety of cubesat mission and type has increased recently. In Korea, some universities and individuals have independently developed cubesats since 2000, and cubesat contests which were organized by KARI and sponsored by Ministry of Science and ICT from 2012 highly contributed to cubesat development in Korea. In addition, domestic institutes such as KARI, KASI started to develop cubesats for space science and exploration mission. Nineteen cubesats have been progressed or completed in development until now. In this paper, we present the technical trend and describe all cubesats in Korea.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.44 no.11
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• pp.1006-1015
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• 2016

This paper presents preliminary design and performance analysis of a fast and high precision Tracking Mount for 1m Satellite Laser Ranging(SLR) which is development by Korea Astronomy and Space science Institute(KASI). SLR is considered to be the most accurate technique currently available for the precise orbit determination of Earth satellites. The SLR technique measures the time of flight between pulses emitted from laser transmitter and pulses returned from satellites with laser retro-reflector array. It provides millimeter level precision of range measurements between SLR stations and satellites. A fast and high precision Tracking Mount for SLR which is proposed in this research should be capable of day and nighttime laser tracking about the satellites with laser reflectors from 200 km to 36,000 km altitude(geosynchronous orbit). In order to meet this requirement, we performed mechanical design and structural analysis for Tracking Mount. Also we designed the motion control system and conducted pre-performance analysis to obtain good performance results for a fast and high precision Tracking Mount.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.283-292
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• 2005

Ionosphere is deeply coupled to the space environment and introduces the perturbations to radio signal because of its electromagnetic characteristics. Therefore, the status of ionosphere can be estimated by analyzing the GPS signal errors which are penetrating the ionosphere and it can be the key to understand the global circulation and change in the upper atmosphere, and the characteristics of space weather. We used 9 GPS Continuously Operating Reference Stations (CORS), which have been operated by Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI) , to determine the high precision of Total Electron Content (TEC) and the pseudorange data which is phase-leveled by a linear combination with carrier phase to reduce the inherent noise. We developed the method to model a regional ionosphere with grid form and its results over South Korea with $0.25^{\circ}\;by\;0.25^{\circ}$ spatial resolution. To improve the precision of ionosphere's TEC value, we applied IDW (Inverse Distance Weight) and Kalman Filtering method. The regional ionospheric model developed by this research was compared with GIMs (Global Ionosphere Maps) preduced by Ionosphere Working Group for 8 days and the results show $3\~4$ TECU difference in RMS values.

• Bulletin of the Korean Space Science Society
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• 2008.10a
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• pp.27.1-27.1
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• 2008

KASI (Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute) is developing a compact wide-field survey space telescope system, MIRIS (The Multi-purpose IR Imaging System) to be launched in 2010 as the main payload of the Korea Science and Technology Satellite 3. Through recent System Design Review (SDR) and Preliminary Design Review (PDR), most of the system design concept was reviewed and confirmed. The near IR imaging system adopted short F/2 optics for wide field low resolution observation at wavelength band 0.9~2.0 um minimizing the effect of attitude control system. The mechanical system is composed of a cover, baffle, optics, and detector system using a $256\times256$ Teledyne PICNIC FPA providing a $3.67\times3.67$ degree field of view with a pixel scale of 51.6 arcsec. We designed a support system to minimize heat transfer with Muti-Layer Insulation. The electronics of the MIRIS system is composed of 7 boards including DSP, control, SCIF. Particular attention is being paid to develop mission operation scenario for space observation to minimize IR background radiation from the Earth and Sun. The scientific purpose of MIRIS is to survey the Galactic plane in the emission line of Pa$\alpha$ ($1.88{\mu}m$) and to detect the cosmic infrared background (CIB) radiation. The CIB is being suspected to be originated from the first generation stars of the Universe and we will test this hypothesis by comparing the fluctuations in I (0.9~1.2 um) and H (1.2~2.0 um) bands to search the red shifted Lyman cutoff signature.

• Journal of Satellite, Information and Communications
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.30-34
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• 2012

National Meteorological Satellite Center(NMSC) of Korea Meteorological Administration(KMA) has launched to implement the application development to get prepared for the space weather operation since 2010. As a action of KMA's space weather work, NMSC constructed Global Navigation Satellite System(GNSS) application system for meteorology and space weather. We will introduce NMSC's space weather application system which derives regional TEC(Total Electron Content) in near real time using nation-wide GNSS network data. First, We constructed system for collecting GNSS data, which is currently collecting about 80 stations operated by agencies like NGII(National Geographic Information Institute), Central Office of DGPS(Differential GPS), and KASI(Korea Astronomy and Space Science) including KMA's own data of 2 stations. In order to retreive regional TEC over Korean peninsular, we build up the automatic processes running every 1-hour. In these processes, firstly, GNSS data of every stations with 24 hours time window are processed to derive DCBs(Differential Code Biases) of each GNSS station and TEC values on every ionosphere piercing point(IPP). Then we made gridded regional TEC map with resolution of 0.25 degree from 31N, 121E to 41N, 135E by combination of all station results within 30 minutes window with assumption that TEC of a given point during a given 30 minutes window would have a constant value. The grid points without TEC value are interpolated using Barnes objective analysis. We presentour regional TEC maps, which can describe better on the status of ionosphere over Korean peninsular compared to IGS TEC maps.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.127-135
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• 2016

Inactive space objects are usually rotating and tumbling as a result of internal or external forces. KOREASAT 1 has been inactive since 2005, and its drift trajectory has been monitored with the optical wide-field patrol network (OWL-Net). However, a quantitative analysis of KOREASAT 1 in regard to the attitude evolution has never been performed. Here, two optical tracking systems were used to acquire raw measurements to analyze the rotation period of two inactive satellites. During the optical campaign in 2013, KOREASAT 1 was observed by a 0.6 m class optical telescope operated by the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI). The rotation period of KOREASAT 1 was analyzed with the light curves from the photometry results. The rotation periods of the low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite ASTRO-H after break-up were detected by OWL-Net on April 7, 2016. We analyzed the magnitude variation of each satellite by differential photometry and made comparisons with the star catalog. The illumination effect caused by the phase angle between the Sun and the target satellite was corrected with the system tool kit (STK) and two line element (TLE) technique. Finally, we determined the rotation period of two inactive satellites on LEO and geostationary Earth orbit (GEO) with light curves from the photometry. The main rotation periods were determined to be 5.2 sec for ASTRO-H and 74 sec for KOREASAT 1.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.567-588
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• 2009

Korea-Japan Joint VLBI Correlator (KJJVC) is being developed by collaborating KASI (Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute), Korea, and NAOJ(National Observatory of Japan), Japan. In early 2010, KJJVC will work in normal operation. In this study, we developed the software correlator which is based on VCS (VLBI Correlation Subsystem) hardware specification as the core component of KJJVC. The main specification of software correlator is 8 Gbps, 8192 output channels, and 262,144-points FFT (Fast Fourier Transform) function same as VCS. And the functional algorithm which is same as specification of VCS and arithmetic register are adopted in this software correlator. To verify the performance of developed software correlator, the correlation experiments were carried out using the spectral line and continuum sources which were observed by VERA (VLBI Exploration of Radio Astrometry), NAOJ. And the experimental results were compared to the output of Mitaka FX correlator by referring spectrum shape, phase rate, and fringe detection and so on. Through the experimental results, we confirmed that the correlation results of software correlator are the same as Mitaka FX correlator and verified the effectiveness of it. In future, we expect that the developed software correlator will be the possible software correlator of KVN (Korean VLBI Network) with KJJVC by introducing the correlation post-processing and modifying the user interface as like GUI (Graphic User Interface).

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.102-102
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• 2014

The NISS (Near-infrared Imaging Spectrometer for Star formation history) onboard NEXTSat-1 is the near-infrared instrument onboard NEXTSat-1 which is being developed by KASI. The main scientific targets are nearby galaxies, galaxy clusters, star-forming regions and low background regions in order to study the cosmic star formation history in local and distant universe. After the Preliminary Design Review, we have fixed major specifications of the NISS. The off-axis optical design with 15cm apertureis optimized to obtain a wide field of view ($2deg.{\times}2deg.$), while minimizing the sensitivity loss. The opto-mechanical structure of the NISS was designed to be safe enough to endure in the launching condition as well as the space environment. The tolerance analysis was performed to cover the wide wavelength range from 0.95 to $3.8{\mu}m$ and to reduce the degradation of optical performance due to thermal variation at the target temperature, 200K. The $1k{\times}1k$ infrared sensor is operated in the dewar at 80K stage. We confirmed that the NISS can be cooled down to below 200K in the nominal orbit through a radiative cooling. Here, we report the preliminary design of the NISS.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.551-559
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• 2005

The Q&A service of the official Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI) webpage was installed in 2000 and have been actively used since then. In this paper, we analyze the questions asked through the Q&A service and the number of inquiries with the aid of statistical methods. We also study the contents of the questions. Specifically, we have created statistics of questions and inquiries that go monthly and yearly, and have developed categories to analyze the characteristics of questions in regards to their cognitive aspects. Each question is categorized into two elements based on their recognitive aspect: science knowledge or science study. Each element also has sub-categories that help readers understand the characteristics of the questions. For the analysis, we used a sample consisted of questions from July to December, 2004. Through this study, we achieved a better understanding of the questions asked by the Q&A service. We are planning to improve the quality of the Q&A service by extending the size of the FAQ(frequently asked questions). Throughout this study, we find that the number of questions are increasing with time, and the overall quality of the questions is improving. As we expect the number of people using our Q&A service to increase and the questions to get more difficult to answer, development of improved content is required.