• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.255-267
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• 2013

In this research, the ground contact opportunity for the fictitious low lunar orbiter is analyzed to prepare for a future Korean lunar orbiter mission. The ground contact opportunity is basically derived from geometrical relations between the typical ground stations at the Earth, the relative positions of the Earth and Moon, and finally, the lunar orbiter itself. Both the cut-off angle and the orbiter's Line of Sight (LOS) conditions (weather orbiter is located at near or far side of the Moon seen from the Earth) are considered to determine the ground contact opportunities. Four KOMPSAT Ground Stations (KGSs) are assumed to be Korea's future Near Earth Networks (NENs) to support lunar missions, and world-wide separated Deep Space Networks (DSNs) are also included during the contact availability analysis. As a result, it is concluded that about 138 times of contact will be made between the orbiter and the Daejeon station during 27.3 days of prediction time span. If these contact times are converted into contact duration, the duration is found to be about 8.55 days, about 31.31% of 27.3 days. It is discovered that selected four KGSs cannot provide continuous tracking of the lunar orbiter, meaning that international collaboration is necessary to track Korea's future lunar orbiter effectively. Possible combinations of world-wide separated DSNs are also suggested to compensate for the lack of contact availability with only four KGSs, as with primary and backup station concepts. The provided algorithm can be easily modified to support any type of orbit around the Moon, and therefore, the presented results could aid further progress in the design field of Korea's lunar orbiter missions.

• 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 Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.55 no.4
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• pp.87-97
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• 2022

Polarimetric measurements of the lunar surface from lunar orbit soon will be available via Wide-Field Polarimetric Camera (PolCam) onboard the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO), which is planned to be launched in mid 2022. To provide calibration data for the PolCam, we are conducting speckle polarimetric measurements of the nearside of the Moon from the Earth's ground. It appears that speckle imaging of the Moon for scientific purposes has not been attempted before, and there is need for a procedure to create a "lucky image" from a number of observed speckle images. As a first step of obtaining calibration data for the PolCam from the ground, we search for the best sharpness measure for lunar surfaces. We then calculate the minimum number of speckle images and the number of images to be shift-and-added for higher resolution (sharpness) and signal-to-noise ratio.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.39A no.4
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• pp.212-214
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• 2014

In this paper, we present the scenario designs of the possibility of space communications for Korean Lunar Explorer and the analysis of its performance, depending upon the explorer's position within the moon's orbit after being launched from earth. As per each scenario, we would like to propose the analysis of the possible communication times and total transmission throughput data per day in two cases: one for using DSN and another for using only Korean's ground station.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.47 no.1
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• pp.41-41
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• 2014

The equivalent phase lag ${\varepsilon}_{lmpq}$ of Earth tide suggested by Lambeck have been found reasonable. Due to a mistake in his calculation, the author falsely claimed that those are too large. However, the main contents of the article are valid and not affected by this mistake.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.37 no.3
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• pp.199-208
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• 2020

This paper presents a kinematic ephemeris generator for Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO) and its performance test results. The kinematic ephemeris generator consists of a ground ephemeris compressor and an onboard ephemeris calculator. The ground ephemeris compressor has to compress desired orbit propagation data by using an interpolation method in a ground system. The onboard ephemeris calculator can generate spacecraft ephemeris and the Sun/Moon ephemeris in onboard computer of the KPLO. Among many interpolation methods, polynomial interpolation with uniform node, Chebyshev interpolation, Hermite interpolation are tested for their performances. As a result of the test, it is shown that all the methods have some cases that meet requirements but there are some performance differences. It is also confirmed that, the Chebyshev interpolation shows better performance than other methods for spacecraft ephemeris generation, and the polynomial interpolation with uniform nodes yields good performance for the Sun/Moon ephemeris generation. Based on these results, a Kinematic ephemeris generator is developed for the KPLO mission. Then, the developed ephemeris generator can find an approximating function using interpolation method considering the size and accuracy of the data to be transmitted.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.39 no.5
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• pp.408-415
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• 2011

The moon landing is composed of the de-orbit descent phase, powered descent phase, and the powered descent phase is divide into 3-sub phase of the braking, approach, final landing phase. In this paper, the lunar lander perform landing control using 3-sub phase of optimal trajectory. First, generate the reference trajectory using gauss pseudo-spectral method. Thereafter generate PID controller using altitude and velocity error in each direction. Finally the lunar lander landing system constitute using the Simulink of Matlab, and perform simulation.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.145-155
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• 2021

In this work, preliminary launch opportunities from NARO Space Center to the Sun-Earth Lagrange point are analyzed. Among five different Sun-Earth Lagrange points, L1 and L2 points are selected as suitable candidates for, respectively, solar and astrophysics missions. With high fidelity dynamics models, the L1 and L2 point targeting problem is formulated regarding the location of NARO Space Center and relevant Target Interface Point (TIP) for each different launch date is derived including launch injection energy per unit mass (C3), Right ascension of the injection orbit Apoapsis Vector (RAV) and Declination of the injection orbit Apoapsis Vector (DAV). Potential launch periods to achieve L1 and L2 transfer trajectory are also investigated regarding coasting characteristics from NARO Space Center. The magnitude of the Lagrange Orbit Insertion (LOI) burn, as well as the Orbit Maintenance (OM) maneuver to maintain more than one year of mission orbit around the Lagrange points, is also derived as an example. Even the current work has been made under many assumptions as there are no specific mission goals currently defined yet, so results from the current work could be a good starting point to extend diversities of future Korean deep-space missions.

• International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.267-280
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• 2014

A spacecraft placed in an Earth-Moon L2 quasi-halo orbit can maintain constant communication between the Earth and the far side of the Moon. This quasi-halo orbit could be used to establish a lunar space station and serve as a gateway to explore the solar system. For a mission in an Earth-Moon L2 quasi-halo orbit, a spacecraft would have to be transferred from the Earth to the vicinity of the Earth-Moon L2 point, then inserted into the Earth-Moon L2 quasi-halo orbit. Unlike the near Earth case, this orbit is essentially very unstable due to mutually perturbing gravitational attractions by the Earth, the Moon and the Sun. In this paper, an insertion maneuver of a spacecraft into an Earth-Moon L2 quasi-halo orbit was investigated using the global optimization algorithm, including simulated annealing, genetic algorithm and pattern search method with collision avoidance taken into consideration. The result shows that the spacecraft can maintain its own position in the Earth-Moon L2 quasi-halo orbit and avoid collisions with threatening objects.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.42 no.8
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• pp.654-660
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• 2014

In this paper, a conceptual design of a launch vehicles is proposed by combining Naro-1 and KSLV-II. For trans-lunar injection (TLI) to lunar orbit at 300 km LEO, the target performance is defined same as that of KSLV-II, which delivers an object of 2.6 tons into 300 km LEO. The proposal launch vehicle concept of this study is combination of 1st stage of KSLV-I and 2-3rd stage of KSLV-II. Thus, it is possible to reduce the development time and also could expand the options for national launch vehicle capabilities with proven technologies.