• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.159-166
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• 1999

As the spatial resolution of remote sensing satellites becomes higher, very accurate determination of the position of a LEO (Low Earth Orbit) satellite is demanding more than ever. Non-symmetric Earth gravity is the major perturbation force to LEO satellites. Since the orbit propagation is performed in the celestial frame while Earth gravity is defined in the terrestrial frame, it is required to convert the coordinates of the satellite from one to the other accurately. Unless the coordinate conversion between the two frames is performed accurately the orbit propagation calculates incorrect Earth gravitational force at a specific time instant, and hence, causes errors in orbit prediction. The coordinate conversion between the two frames involves precession, nutation, Earth rotation and polar motion. Among these factors, unpredictability and uncertainty of Earth rotation, called UTI-UTC, is the largest error source. In this paper, the effect of UTI-UTC on the accuracy of the LEO propagation is introduced, tested and analzed. Considering the maximum unpredictability of UTI-UTC, 0.9 seconds, the meaningful order of non-spherical Earth harmonic functions is derived.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.1-10
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• 2003

A precise kinematic orbit determination (P-KOD) procedure for Low Earth Orbiter(LEO) using the GPS ion-free triple differenced carrier phases is presented. Because the triple differenced observables provide only relative information, the first epoch's positions of the orbit should be held fixed. Then, both forward and backward filtering was executed to mitigate the effect of biases of the first epoch's position. p-KOD utilizes the precise GPS orbits and ground stations data from International GPS Service (IGS) so that the only unknown parameters to be solved are positions of the satellite at each epoch. Currently, the 3-D accuracy off-KOD applied to CHAMP (CHAllenging Min-isatellite Payload) shows better than 35 cm compared to the published rapid scientific orbit (RSO) solution from GFZ (GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam). The data screening for cycle slips is a particularly challenging procedure for LEO, which moves very fast in the middle of the ionospheric layer. It was found that data screening using SNR (signal to noise ratio) generates best results based on the residual analysis using RSO. It is expected that much better accuracy are achievable with refined prescreening procedure and optimized geometry of the satellites and ground stations.

• Aerospace Engineering and Technology
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.205-212
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• 2006

Atmospheric drag is the most significant factor effecting the low Earth satellites under the altitude of 800 km Although the atmospheric density of the low Earth orbit is very low compared to that of the sea level, the accumulated effect of the atmospheric drag slowly lowers the satellite velocity at the perigee. Decrease in velocity at perigee directly causes decrease in altitude at apogee which changes the eccentricity of the orbit. The orbit finally reaches a circular orbit before reentering the Earth. This paper states the methods of calculating the atmospheric drag and the lifetime of the satellite. The lifetime of the kick motor and the satellites which will be used on KSLV-L are calculated by Satellite Tool Kit.

• Proceedings of the KSRS Conference
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• 2007.10a
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• pp.207-210
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• 2007

A part of the big differences between LEO(Low Earth Orbit) and GEO(Geostationary Earth Orbit) satellite is that transfer orbit is used or not or what tolerance of the position on the mission orbit is permitted. That is to say, the transfer orbit is not used and the constraint of orbit position is not adapted on LEO satellite. Whereas for GEO satellite case, the transfer orbit shall be used due to the very high altitude and the satellite shall be stayed in the station keeping box which is permitted on the mission orbit. These phases are functions for AOCS mission. The aim of this paper is to introduce the AOCS hardware configuration for COMS (Communication, Ocean and Meteorological Satellite). The AOCS hardware of COMS consist of 3 Linear Analogue Sun Sensors (LIASS), 3 Bi-Axis Sun Sensors (BASS), 2 Infra-Red Earth Sensors (IRES), 3 Fiber Optical Gyroscopes (FOG), 5 momentum wheels and 14 thrusters. In this paper, each component is explained how to be used, how to locate and what relation between the AOCS algorithm and these components.

• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.37-50
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• 1997

We consider the channel allocation problem for the earth orbit (LEO) satellite systems. This problm is known to be NP-complete and a couple of heuristic algorithms have been developed. In this paper, we convert the problem into a simpler form through the concept of pattern. And we suggest another algorithm based on Simulated Annealing for this simplified problem. The results of performance comparison show that our method works very well. Simulation results are reported.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.167-180
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• 2008

The resolution of Earth images taken from a satellite has close relation with satellite's altitude. If a satellite has lower altitude, it gets a picture having better resolution. However the satellite will be exposed to heavier air drag and will spend more fuel to maintain its altitude for a desired mission. Therefore, in this study, the required fuel to maintain very low earth orbit(LEO) with severe air drag is analyzed using optimization method such as collocation method. The required fuel to maintain the low altitude has significantly increased as the mission altitude is lowered and the solar activity is maximized. This study also shows that the fuel reduced by increasing the period of the satellite maneuver is very small, and that slightly increasing the satellite's mission altitude is much effective in reducing the amount of fuel to maintain its altitude. The calculated fuel to maintain very low earth orbit in this study would give useful information in planning the budget of fuel and cost for LEO satellites.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.40 no.1
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• pp.35-44
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• 2023

Surveillance and reconnaissance intelligence in the space domain will become increasingly important in future battlefield environments. Moreover, to assimilate the military provocations and trends of hostile countries, imagery intelligence of the highest possible resolution is required. There are many methods for improving the resolution of optical satellites when observing the ground, such as designing satellite optical systems with a larger diameter and lowering the operating altitude. In this paper, we propose a method for improving ground observation resolution by using an optical system for a previously designed low orbit satellite and lowering the operating altitude of the satellite. When the altitude of a satellite is reduced in a circular orbit, a large amount of thrust fuel is required to maintain altitude because the satellite's altitude can decrease rapidly due to atmospheric drag. However, by using the critical inclination, which can fix the position of the perigee in an elliptical orbit to the observation area, the operating altitude of the satellite can be reduced using less fuel compared to a circular orbit. This method makes it possible to obtain a similar observational resolution of a medium-sized satellite with the same weight and volume as a small satellite. In addition, this method has the advantage of reducing development and launch costs to that of a small-sized satellite. As a result, we designed an elliptical orbit. The perigee of the orbit is 300 km, the apogee is 8,366.52 km, and the critical inclination is 116.56°. This orbit remains at its lowest altitude to the Korean peninsula constantly with much less orbit maintenance fuel compared to the 300 km circular orbit.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Navigation and Port Research Conference
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• v.1
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• pp.367-370
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• 2006

A GPS-based time synchronization technique employing a refined HW circuitry and SW algorithm is considered as fine time-management system for Low Earth Orbit (LEO) remote sensing satellites. By synchronizing the On-Board Time (OBT) within satellites to the GPS 1PPS, a very expensive, highly accurate on-board clock is not required to determine the precise on-board time management. Also, the satellite command generation in ground stations and postprocessing of earth observation data which a particular image is acquired. This paper analyses on-orbit verification of the existing satellite time sync architecture and presents a new time sync architecture, operation and relation between the OBT and the GPS time.

• Journal of Satellite, Information and Communications
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.51-57
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• 2016

Many kinds of telemetry should be monitored to check the state of spacecraft and it leads the time consumption. However, it is very important to define the status of satellite in short time because the contact number and time of low earth orbit satellite is limited. Also, on-board fault management should be prepared for non-contact operation because of the sever space environment. In this paper, on-board and ground autonomous operation method for the safety enhancement is described. Immediate fault detection and response is possible in ground by explicit anomaly detection through satellite event and error information. Also, satellite operation assistant system is proposed for ground autonomy that collect event sequence in accordance with related telemetry and recommend or execute an appropriate action for abnormal state. Critical parameter monitoring method with checking rate, mode and threshold is developed for on-board autonomous fault management. If the value exceeds the limit, pre-defined command sequence is executed.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Navigation and Port Research Conference
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• v.1
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• pp.141-144
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• 2006

The deviations in the injection orbital parameters, resulting from launcher dispersions, need to be estimated and used for autonomous satellite operations. For the proposed small satellite mission of the university there will be two GPS receivers onboard the satellite to provide the instantaneous orbital state to the onboard data handling system. In order to meet the power requirements, the satellite will be sun-tracking whenever there is no imaging operation. For imaging activities, the satellite will be maneuvered to nadir-pointing mode. Due to such different modes of orientation the geometry for the GPS receivers will not be favorable at all times and there will be instances of poor geometry resulting in no output from the GPS receivers. Onboard the satellite, the orbital information should be continuously available for autonomous switching on/off of various subsystems. The paper presents the strategies to make use of small arcs of data from GPS receivers to compute the mean orbital parameters and use the updated orbital parameters to calculate the position and velocity whenever the same is not available from GPS receiver. Thus the navigation message from the GPS receiver, namely the position vector in Earth-Centered-Earth-Fixed (ECEF) frame, is used as measurements. As for estimation, two techniques - (1) batch least squares method, and (2) Kalman Filter method are used for orbit estimation (in real time). The performance of the onboard orbit estimation has been assessed based on hardware based multi-channel GPS Signal simulator. The results indicate good converge even with short arcs of data as the GPS navigation data are generally very accurate and the data rate is also fast (typically 1Hz).