• The Korean Journal of Air & Space Law and Policy
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.57-77
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• 2004

According to the dispostions of 1967 Space Treaty, the contracting states should assume legal obligation to assure an authorization and continuing supervision with regard to the national space activities. Any space activities have to abide by the rules of international law as well as specified obligations set by the Treaty. Among several treaty obligations, International responsibility to be bome by the state, and the liability principles are deemed as major outstanding obligations which the state should takeinto account. While nation's first launch site is to be operational in a few years, korean government should assure that its national space activities, such as launching of space object, operation of satellites, etc. should be under governmental authorization and supervision. A legislative effort would be most desirable undertaking for this regard. Especially a specific legislation needs tobe studied forwith such authorization regime so that international responsibilty and the liability as to thelaunching of space object should be under the regulatory scheme. This study focuses upon the necessity of such legislation and proposes some major items and framework for the legislation

• Journal of Satellite, Information and Communications
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.1-6
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• 2014

The increasing demands and utilization of the multi-purpose satellites have led to diverse research activities with regards to satellite image processing and applications. In this paper, the research activities of satellite images is investigated relevant to domestic agricultural activities in past 5 years and the system characteristics of the related spaceborne payload is analyzed. For this purpose, a broad range of research materials has been collected published in past years and a statistical analysis is performed to classify the use of satellite images. Overall the current work is aimed to carry out a comprehensive analysis on the current status of satellite imaging in agricultural sectors. Furthermore, this paper can be utilized to identify and support the incoming satellite development plan utilizing medium imaging capabilities specially in the field of agricultural uses.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Geographic Information Studies
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.218-237
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• 2018

The purpose of this study is to propose a mid - range low - orbit water disaster monitoring satellite development plan to revolutionize water disaster management infrastructure through securing an independent and leading observation infrastructure and to secure safety against disaster prepared for climate change. Water and water disaster satellites should be able to detect changes in the surface of the ground and observe hydrological factors during daytime, nighttime, and bad weather. In addition, independent technology development should be possible. To do this, we selected C-band image radar payload considering domestic technology and water resources management, and suggested detailed development plan. In this way, it is reflected in the national next-generation mid-satellite 2-phase project plan to secure the basis for building a disaster monitoring system related to wide-area water.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2022.05a
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• pp.329-329
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• 2022

Accurate characterization of terrestrial precipitation variation from high spatial resolution satellite sensors is beneficial for urban hydrology and microscale agriculture modeling, as well as natural disasters (e.g., urban flooding) early warning. However, the widely-used top-down approach for precipitation retrieval from microwave satellites is limited in several hydrological and agricultural applications due to their coarse spatial resolution. In this research, we aim to apply a novel bottom-up method, the parameterized SM2RAIN, where precipitation can be estimated from soil moisture signals based on an inversion of water balance model, to generate high spatial resolution terrestrial precipitation estimates at 0.01º grid (roughly 1-km) from the C-band SAR Sentinel-1. This product was then tested against a common reanalysis-based precipitation data and a domestic rain gauge network from the Korean Meteorological Administration (KMA) over central South Korea, since a clear difference between climatic types (coasts and mainlands) and land covers (croplands and mixed forests) was reported in this area. The results showed that seasonal precipitation variability strongly affected the SM2RAIN performances, and the product derived from separated parameters (rainy and non-rainy seasons) outperformed that estimated considering the entire year. In addition, the product retrieved over the mainland mixed forest region showed slightly superior performance compared to that over the coastal cropland region, suggesting that the 6-day time resolution of S1 data is suitable for capturing the stable precipitation pattern in mainland mixed forests rather than the highly variable precipitation pattern in coastal croplands. Future studies suggest comparing this product to the traditional top-down products, as well as evaluating their integration for enhancing high spatial resolution precipitation over entire South Korea.

• Journal of Aerospace System Engineering
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.27-33
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• 2024

According to the success of the Nuri Space Launch Vehicle (KSLV-II) and the development goal of the next generation space launch vehicle (KSLV-III), it is expected that the domestic geostationary satellite capability will be increased from (1 to 3.7) ton. Also, it is predicted that substantial ability of about 1 ton can be provided for the space exploration of the Moon, Mars, asteroids, etc. The Goheung space launch site is optimized for sun-synchronous small satellites, and due to the essential precondition that the launch trajectory does not impinge another country's sovereign airspace, it is not satisfactory as a geostationary satellite launching site. Its latitude also requires more energy to shape the rotating orbital plane from the initial injection status. This results in a decreasing factor of economic feasibility, including the operating complexity. Therefore, in parallel with the development of a next generation space launch vehicle, the practical process for acquisition of oversea land or sea space launch site near the Earth's equator and research for the optimization of orbiting methods of geostationary satellite injection must be continued.

• Journal of Satellite, Information and Communications
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.95-100
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• 2015

These days, satellite core technologies are being developed as a way to provide various information by considering simultaneously sending, wide area covering, highly precide, and anti-disaster technologies. Not only global positioning, and image but also space launcher, satellite bus, satellite payload, earth station are being convergently developed in a different technological field. Especially, it is required a lot of initial investing expenditure to provide the Earth observational information service based on the space technologies. Such a trend and change of satellite technologies Korea has realized the necessity for the domestic independent development of next generation earth observation satellites, and are preparing the profound items such as a detailed implementation plan for the efficient development project. Like the satellite advanced countries, it should be transparently carried out that an efficient implementation of the developing target related to the geostationary earth observation satellite development, establishment of technological auditing function and quality assurance system, implementation plan, progressing courses and results of the satellite development program by way of planning, evaluation and management. For these things cited above, it is necessary to operate systematically and continuously the professional structural system by the governmental department in order to control the geostationary earth observation satellite development project. Therefore, this study proposes a development project management improvement method of the Korea next generation geostationary earth observation satellite based on the development project management system of the domestic geostationary satellite system.

• Journal of Satellite, Information and Communications
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.108-115
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• 2012

Many studies relating the satellite navigation has been done by a relatively small research community in Korea. Most of domestic research has been focused on the application of the satellite navigation technology, but recently the topics of the next generation satellite navigation system are emphasized for its importance. Even opinions suggesting a future Korea's own satellite navigation system are not that uncommon. Due to the geographic, economic, and technological reasons, it is not widely discussed yet. However, a development technical roadmap regarding the Korea's own navigation satellite was established on the Korea Space Development Plan in general term. Currently four global navigation satellite systems are operating or being deployed. Several regional navigation satellite systems are in planning and development phase. Particularly in Asia, China has launched several satellites to complete their own global navigation satellite system, COMPASS until 2020. Japan launched one satellite and has planned to launch rest of set until 2013. It is proper time to develop Korea's own navigation satellite system to acquire the domestic space development technology and the security of navigational infrastructure. In this study, the validity or the feasibility of the Korea's own satellite navigation system is not discussed; rather the possibility and suitability of the additional information to the current operational navigation message is main target. For the first payload of the future Korea's satellite navigation satellite, a regional augmented system is more likely. This study also is focused on that aspect.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.39 no.5_1
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• pp.729-741
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• 2023

The Operational Linescan System (OLS)sensor is a sensor aboard satellites launched through the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) that detects light in the visible and infrared bands emitted at night. Studies by several researchers have shown a high correlation between nighttime light data from OLS sensors and gross domestic product values. In this study, we investigated the correlation of nighttime light data with the total amount of individual land prices, which is one of the various indicators related to economic development. The study found that most cities and provinces showed a high correlation with a correlation coefficient of more than 0.7, and the correlation coefficient of 0.7837 between the total amount of individual land price and nighttime light data for the entire South Korea was also high. However, unlike other cities and provinces, Seoul has a low correlation coefficient of 0.5648 between nighttime light and the total amount of individual land price, which is analyzed as a reason that the digital number value of the OLS sensor is close to the maximum value and cannot show further brightness changes. This study is expected to help identify announced land prices in areas where announced land prices are not systematically organized and to analyze land use changes in such areas.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.39 no.6_3
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• pp.1679-1692
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• 2023

South Korea is a country that emits a large amount of pollutants as a result of population growth and industrial development and is also severely affected by transboundary air pollution due to its geographical location. As pollutants from both domestic and foreign sources contribute to air pollution in Korea, the location of air pollutant emission sources is crucial for understanding the movement and distribution of pollutants in the atmosphere and establishing national-level air pollution management and response strategies. Based on this background, this study aims to effectively acquire spatial information on domestic and international air pollutant emission sources, which is essential for analyzing air pollution status, by utilizing high-resolution optical satellite images and deep learning-based image segmentation models. In particular, industrial parks and quarries, which have been evaluated as contributing significantly to transboundary air pollution, were selected as the main research subjects, and images of these areas from multi-purpose satellites 3 and 3A were collected, preprocessed, and converted into input and label data for model training. As a result of training the U-Net model using this data, the overall accuracy of 0.8484 and mean Intersection over Union (mIoU) of 0.6490 were achieved, and the predicted maps showed significant results in extracting object boundaries more accurately than the label data created by course annotations.

• Atmosphere
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.47-57
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• 2005

Extending the success of the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM), the spaceborne measurement of precipitation by Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) is initiated. The GPM consists of a core satellite which will have a dual-frequency precipitation radar (DPR) and a constellation of small satellites equipped with microwave radiometers. The GPM is inherently a global program. Responding to the GPM plan, many other nations are much interested in participating in the GPM team or simply utilizing GPM products aiming at the development of meteorological technology. Korea can fully function its role if Korea is selected as a CAL/VAL site for the GPM because Korea maintains a well-established dense rain gauge network (AWS), precipitation radars, and the Haenam super site for surface observation. In this feasibility study, the necessities of the GPM project in the context of academical and social backgrounds and associated international and domestic activities are investigated. And GPM-related core technologies and application areas are defined. As a result, it is found that GPM will represent a great opportunity for us because of its ability to provide not only much enhanced three-hourly global rain products but also very useful tools for the enhancement of weather forecasting capabilities, management of water resources, development and implementation of monitoring techniques for severe weather phenomena, agricultural managements and climate application. Furthermore, rain retrieval and CAL/VAL technologies obtained during the involvement in the international GPM project will serve as basic knowledges to run our own geostationary satellite program.