• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.40 no.2
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• pp.79-88
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• 2023

On Aug. 4, 2022, at 23:08:48 (UTC), the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO), also known as Danuri, was launched using a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch vehicle. Currently, KPLO is successfully conducting its science mission around the Moon. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)'s Deep Space Network (DSN) was utilized for the successful flight operation of KPLO. A great deal of joint effort was made between the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) and NASA DSN team since the beginning of KPLO ground system design for the success of the mission. The efficient utilization and management of NASA DSN in deep space exploration are critical not only for the spacecraft's telemetry and command but also for tracking the flight dynamics (FD) operation. In this work, the top-level DSN interface architecture, detailed workflows, DSN support levels, and practical lessons learned from the joint team's efforts are presented for KPLO's successful FD operation. Due to the significant joint team's efforts, KPLO is currently performing its mission smoothly in the lunar mission orbit. Through KPLO cooperative operation experience with DSN, a more reliable and efficient partnership is expected not only for Korea's own deep space exploration mission but also for the KARI-NASA DSN joint support on other deep space missions in the future.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.19 no.7
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• pp.144-152
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• 2018

Lunar exploration, which was led by the United States and the former Soviet Union, ceased in the 1970s. On the other hand, since massive lunar ice deposits and rare resources were found in 1990s, European Union, China, Japan, and India began to participate in lunar exploration to secure future lunar resource as well as to construct a lunar base. In the near future, it is expected that national space agencies and private industries will participate in the lunar exploration together. Their missions will include the exploration and sample return of lunar resources. Lunar resources have a close relationship with the lunar in-situ resource utilization (ISRU). To construct a lunar base, it is inevitable to bring huge amounts of resources from Earth. Water and oxygen, however, will need to be produced from local lunar resources and lunar terrain feature will need to be used to construct the lunar base. Therefore, in this paper, the global trends on lunar exploration and lunar construction technology are investigated and compared along with the ISRU technology to support human exploration and construct a lunar base on the Moon's surface.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.38 no.3
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• pp.185-192
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• 2021

This technical paper deals the practical transformation algorithms between several lunar reference frames which will be used for Korea pathfinder lunar orbiter (KPLO) flight operation. Despite of various lunar reference frame definitions already exist, use of a common transformation algorithm while establishing lunar reference frame is very important for all members related to KPLO mission. This is because use of slight different parameters during frame transformation may result significant misleading while reprocessing data based on KPLO flight dynamics. Therefore, details of practical transformation algorithms for the KPLO mission specific lunar reference frames is presented with step by step implementation procedures. Examples of transformation results are also presented to support KPLO flight dynamics data user community which is expected to give practical guidelines while post processing the data as their needs. With this technical paper, common understandings of reference frames that will be used throughout not only the KPLO flight operation but also science data reprocessing can be established. It is expected to eliminate, or at least minimize, unnecessary confusion among all of the KPLO mission members including: Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as well as other organizations participating in KPLO payload development and operation, or further lunar science community world-wide who are interested in KPLO science data post processing.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.48 no.3
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• pp.233-242
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• 2020

The history of mankind's lunar exploration began in 1958 with the United States of America "Pioneer 0" mission. In 1950s~1970s, the United States of America and Union of Soviet Socialist Republics carried out missions and experienced numerous failures to explore the moon. Since the 1990s, Japan, Europe, China and other Advanced country in Space technology have started to explore the moon and in 2016, Korea began to develop the lunar orbiter for lunar exploration. This paper analyzed the failure cases and causes of the lunar exploration in the USA and the USSR in the 1950s~1970s according to the mission purpose. Examples of mission delays, cancel, and failures that occurred during lunar exploration in post-1990s were presented. Through the investigation and analysis, this paper is intended to serve as a reference of the lunar exploration mission that Korea is working on or will be performing in the future.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.39 no.4
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• pp.181-194
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• 2022

Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO), also known as Danuri, was successfully launched on 4 Aug. from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station using a Space-X Falcon-9 rocket. Flight dynamics (FD) operational readiness was one of the critical parts to be checked before the flight. To demonstrate FD software's readiness and enhance the operator's contingency response capabilities, KPLO FD specialists planned, organized, and conducted four simulations and two rehearsals before the KPLO launch. For the efficiency and integrity of FD simulation and rehearsal, different sets of blind test data were prepared, including the simulated tracking measurements that incorporated dynamical model errors, maneuver execution errors, and other errors associated with a tracking system. This paper presents the simulation and rehearsal results with lessons learned for the KPLO FD operational readiness checkout. As a result, every functionality of FD operation systems is firmly secured based on the operation procedure with an enhancement of contingency operational response capability. After conducting several simulations and rehearsals, KPLO FD specialists were much more confident in the flight teams' ability to overcome the challenges in a realistic flight and FD software's reliability in flying the KPLO. Moreover, the results of this work will provide numerous insights to the FD experts willing to prepare deep space flight operations.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.41 no.1
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• pp.43-60
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• 2024

Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO) is South Korea's first space exploration mission, developed by the Korea Aerospace Research Institute. It aims to develop technologies for lunar exploration, explore lunar science, and test new technologies. KPLO was launched on August 5, 2022, by a Falcon-9 launch vehicle from cape canaveral space force station (CCSFS) in the United States and placed on a ballistic lunar transfer (BLT) trajectory. A total of four trajectory correction maneuvers were performed during the approximately 4.5-month trans-lunar cruise phase to reach the Moon. Starting with the first lunar orbit insertion (LOI) maneuver on December 16, the spacecraft performed a total of three maneuvers before arriving at the lunar mission orbit, at an altitude of 100 kilometers, on December 27, 2022. After entering lunar orbit, the commissioning phase validated the operation of the mission mode, in which the payload is oriented toward the center of the Moon. After completing about one month of commissioning, normal mission operations began, and each payload successfully performed its planned mission. All of the spacecraft operations that KPLO performs from launch to normal operations were designed through the system operations design process. This includes operations that are automatically initiated post-separation from the launch vehicle, as well as those in lunar transfer orbit and lunar mission orbit. Key operational procedures such as the spacecraft's initial checkout, trajectory correction maneuvers, LOI, and commissioning were developed during the early operation preparation phase. These procedures were executed effectively during both the early and normal operation phases. The successful execution of these operations confirms the robust verification of the system operation.

• The Journal of the Petrological Society of Korea
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.373-384
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• 2017

A new era with the $4^{th}$ Industrial Revolution certainly brings new opportunities for human to explore human's activities outside of the Earth. After the Apollo program, exploration for lunar resources and establishment of lunar base seem to be in reality. This could be due to new findings by the LCROSS and LRO proving the advanced scientific development and new scientific results about the moon from Asian countries including China with Chang'E missions. It is expected that fossil fuels will be in shortage in the near future and at this time, Helium-3 could be an energy resource as a replacement of the fossil fuels. At present it is well known that countries like Russia, USA, and Europe will continue to investigate on lunar exploration especially with landers toward future human activities on the moon to establish a lunar base. With this point of view, it is important for human to understand lunar resources and prepare for prospective utilization of lunar resources. This review paper considers on a point of view in both lunar resource exploration and establishment of lunar base.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute Of Construction Engineering and Management
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• 2008.11a
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• pp.828-832
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• 2008

In 2004, The U.S president Bush announces space Exploration Vision included in Lunar outpost plan. Following the Space Exploration Vision announced by Bush, NASA made Construction Roadmap and studied space construction varietly to construct Lunar Outpost in 2025. The purpose to construct Lunar outpost is to develop space science and hitech industry and to secure the lunar materials. Especially, Lunar has more than 5billion ton He-3. In this reason, The countries advanced in Space Industry like U.S., Japan, Europe and China is studying space construction to mine Lunar materials and shelter to live. In this paper, We will make definition and necesarity of space construction and research Space Construction research trends to use for the preparation of Korea's space construction roadmap.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.211-219
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• 2016

Korea's lunar exploration project includes the launching of an orbiter, a lander (including a rover), and an experimental orbiter (referred to as a lunar pathfinder). Laser altimeters have played an important scientific role in lunar, planetary, and asteroid exploration missions since their first use in 1971 onboard the Apollo 15 mission to the Moon. In this study, a laser altimeter was proposed as a scientific instrument for the Korean lunar orbiter, which will be launched by 2020, to study the global topography of the surface of the Moon and its gravitational field and to support other payloads such as a terrain mapping camera or spectral imager. This study presents the baseline design and performance model for the proposed laser altimeter. Additionally, the study discusses the expected performance based on numerical simulation results. The simulation results indicate that the design of system parameters satisfies performance requirements with respect to detection probability and range error even under unfavorable conditions.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.247-256
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• 2015

In this work, an efficient method with which to evaluate the high-degree-and-order gravitational harmonics of the non-sphericity of a central body is described and applied to state predictions of a lunar orbiter. Unlike the work of Song et al. (2010), which used a conventional computation method to process gravitational harmonic coefficients, the current work adapted a well-known recursion formula that directly uses fully normalized associated Legendre functions to compute the acceleration due to the non-sphericity of the moon. With the formulated algorithms, the states of a lunar orbiting satellite are predicted and its performance is validated in comparisons with solutions obtained from STK/Astrogator. The predicted differences in the orbital states between STK/Astrogator and the current work all remain at a position of less than 1 m with velocity accuracy levels of less than 1 mm/s, even with different orbital inclinations. The effectiveness of the current algorithm, in terms of both the computation time and the degree of accuracy degradation, is also shown in comparisons with results obtained from earlier work. It is expected that the proposed algorithm can be used as a foundation for the development of an operational flight dynamics subsystem for future lunar exploration missions by Korea. It can also be used to analyze missions which require very close operations to the moon.