• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.46 no.4
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• pp.324-331
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• 2018

The thermal environment on lunar surface is more severe than that of earth's surface or low earth orbit because of the long daytime and nighttime due to 28 days of rotation cycle of moon. Thus, analyzing heat flux on lunar lander at potential landing sites is important to determine the landing site in its initial design phase. In this study, thermal model of lunar regolith that can simulate lunar surface temperature was constructed for analyzing thermal characteristics according to the potential landing sites of lunar lander. The heat flux analyses were performed various latitudes of equator, mid-latitude, polar regions, lunar mare and highland. In addition, we also investigated the heat flux of lunar lander when it is landed on adjacent area to hill.

• 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.

• International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.288-295
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• 2011

This paper addresses minimum-fuel, two-dimensional trajectory optimization for a soft lunar landing from a parking orbit to a desired landing site. The landing site is usually not considered when performing trajectory optimization so that the landing problem can be handled. However, for precise trajectories for landing at a desired site to be designed, the landing site has to be considered as the terminal constraint. To convert the trajectory optimization problem into a parameter optimization problem, a pseudospectral method was used, and C code for feasible sequential quadratic programming was used as a numerical solver. To check the reliability of the results obtained, a feasibility check was performed.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aviation and Aeronautics
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.75-80
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• 2014

A lunar lander demonstrator developed for the purpose of demonstrating lunar landing technologies recently in Korea. The thruster control system of the lunar lander demonstrator adopted the main thrusters for altitude control and the reaction thrusters for attitude control. In this paper, we propose a path tracking controller base on Euler angles. The control signals of the controller are of continuous type. And Pulse Width Modulator(PWM) is adopted to provide On/Off signals. We perform MATLAB simulation for evaluating the path tracking performance and the final landing velocity of the lunar lander demonstrator.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.43 no.11
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• pp.984-997
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• 2015

Chang'e-3 consisting of a lunar lander and exploration rover was launched on December 1, 2013 aboard a Long March 3B rocket flying from Xichang space launch center. Chang'e-3 was inserted into the lunar orbit after about a 5-day transit to the Moon and landed on the targeted landing site after orbiting around the Moon for 8 days. The successful landing of the Chang'e-3 gives a lot of help to analyze the future needs of the subsystem technologies and to figure out the trajectory from launch to lunar landing as well as operation sequences in the development of Korean lunar exploration is scheduled. Therefore, the configuration and analysis of overall mission of Chang'e-3 is performed based on the public information from the press and website. As a result, overall mission trajectory is reconstructed by solving boundary condition and then estimating control variable. Visibility status and eclipse status also analyzes so communication and power charge condition is as good as to operate lunar lander. Mass budget of the lander is derived using ${\Delta}V$ according to specific impulse.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2003.10a
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• pp.531-536
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• 2003

In this paper, a redesigned guidance and control system for a lunar lander is presented. In past studies, the authors developed a trajectory and attitude control system which achieves the vertical soft landing on the lunar surface. It is confirmed that the system has a good tracking ability to a predefined profile and good robustness against a thruster failure mode where a partial failure of clustered engines was assumed. However, under the previous control laws, the landing point tends to be shifted, in response to the system parameter values, from a target point. Also, an unbalanced moment due to a thruster failure mode was not considered in the simulation. Therefore, in this study, the downrange control is added to the system to enable the vehicle to land at a pre-assigned target point accurately. Furthermore, inhibiting the effect of the unbalanced moment is attempted thorough redesigning the attitude control system. A numerical simulation was performed to confirm the ability of the proposed system with regard to the above problems. Moreover, in the past simulations, a low initial altitude was assumed as an initial condition: in this study, however, the performance of the proposed system is examined over the whole trajectory from an initial altitude of 10 [km] to the lunar surface.

• International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.67-74
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• 2009

In general, the lunar landing stage can be divided into two distinct phases: de-orbit and descent, and the descent phase usually comprises two sub-phases: braking and approach. And many optimization problems of minimal energy are usually focused on descent phases. In these approaches, the energy of de-orbit burning is not considered. Therefore, a possible low perilune altitude can be chosen to save fuel for the descent phase. Perilune altitude is typically specified between 10 and 15km because of the mountainous lunar terrain and possible guidance errors. However, it requires more de-orbit burning energy for the lower perilune altitude. Therefore, in this paper, the perilune altitude of the intermediate orbit is also considered with optimal thrust programming for minimal energy. Furthermore, the perilune altitude and optimal thrust programming can be expressed by a function of the radius of a parking orbit by using continuation method and co-state estimator.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.47 no.1
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• pp.26-34
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• 2019

In this paper, a coarse lunar soil model is developed using discrete element method and its computed physical properties are compared with those of the actual lunar soil for its validation. The surface of the actual moon consists of numerous craters and rocks of various sizes, and it is covered with fine dry soil which seriously affects the landing stability of the lunar lander. Therefore, in consideration of the environment of the lunar regolith, the lunar soil is realized using discrete element method. To validate the coarse model of lunar soil, the simulations of the indentation test and the direct shear test are performed to check the physical properties(indentation depth, cohesion stress, internal friction angle). To examine the performance of the proposed model, the drop simulation of finite element model of single-leg landing gear is performed on proposed soil models with different particle diameters. The impact load delivered to the strut of the lander is compared to test results.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2001.10a
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• pp.167.2-167
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• 2001

This paper presents guidance and control laws which guarantee a minimum fuel consumption and have obustness against various disturbances during a terminal-landing phase on the lunar surface. The nonlinear robust tracking control system is designed to track the reference profiles, which are expressed by exponential functions. An adjustment law in the tracking controller is given in the form of the differential equations with respect to the controller´s variable gains. Computer simulations are performed to examine the tracking accuracy, the robustness in a thrust failure mode, and the vertical soft landing at a pre-assigned point on the lunar surface. The results of numerical simulation show the effectiveness of the present control law.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.44 no.1
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• pp.12-22
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• 2016

Lidar-based hazard avoidance landing system for lunar lander calculates hazard cost with respect to the desired local landing area in order to identify hazard and designate safe landing point where the cost is minimum basically using slope and roughness of the landing area. In this case, if the parameters are only considered, chosen landing target can be designated near hazard threatening the lander. In order to solve this problem and select optimal safe landing point, hazard cost based on relative distance to hazard should not be considered as well as cost based on terrain parameters. In this paper, the effect of hazard cost based on relative distance to hazard on safe landing performance was analyzed and it was confirmed that landing site designation with two relative distances to hazard results in the best safe landing performance by an experiment using three-dimensional depth camera.