• 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.

• Journal of the Optical Society of Korea
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.52-55
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• 2011

We discuss the effect of stray light on a high-precision camera in an LEO(Low Earth Orbit) satellite. The critical objects and illumination objects were sorted to discover the stray light sources in the optical system. Scatter modeling was applied to determine a noise effect on the surface of a detector, and the relative flux of a signal and noise were also calculated. The stable range of reflectivity of the beam splitter was estimated for various scattering models.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2005.05a
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• pp.949-952
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• 2005

According to the national space program in Korea, is satellites will be launch into space up to 2015. Especially, KARI is going to develope of its own a high resolution camera of less than 1m to be mounted on next Multipurpose Satellite. When performing testing of large spacecraft or hardware that will be launched into orbit, it is necessary to conduct a testing with space-simulated environment. To achieve this requirement, thermal vacuum chamber is generally used. KARI has been developed a very Large Thermal Vacuum Chamber(LTVC) from 2003 to accomodate future space program, such as KOMPSAT, COMS, and Launch vehicles. This new facility will be used to qualify the first self developed High Resolution Camera, which will be loaded on KOMPSAT-3. To perform an optical test for space camera, it is necessary to provide vibration free environment. Thus the vibration responses on the optical table due to external vibration should be minimized by using a special isolation system. In this paper, we propose the concept design of vibration isolation system for the development of the high resolution camera.

• Proceedings of the KSRS Conference
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• 2007.10a
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• pp.390-393
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• 2007

KOMPSAT-2, the first Korean high resolution earth observing satellite, continuously acquires high resolution images since July 2006. The quality of satellite images should be geometrically and radiometrically ensured before distribution to users. This study focused on absolute radiometric calibration which is a prerequisite procedure to ensure the radiometric quality of optical satellite images. In this study, we performed reflectance-based vicarious calibration methods on several uniform targets collected through several field campaigns in 2007. The radiative transfer model, MODTRAN, was used to estimate the amount of energy received at the sensor. The energy reached at the sensor are affected by several factors such as reflectance of targets, atmospheric condition, geometry condition between Sun and the sensor, etc. This study proposes the absolute radiometric calibration coefficients of KOMPSAT-2 MSC images combining several types of collected data through field works and tried to compare dynamic range of sensor-detected energy with other commercial high resolution sensors.

• Proceedings of the KSRS Conference
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• 2008.10a
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• pp.155-158
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• 2008

The needs for digital models of real environment such as 3D terrain or cyber city model are increasing. Most of applications related with modeling and simulation require virtual environment constructed from geospatial information of real world in order to guarantee reliability and accuracy of the simulation. The most fundamental data for building virtual environment, terrain elevation and orthogonal imagery is acquired from optical sensor of satellite or airplane. Providing interoperable and reusable digital model is important to promote practical application of high-resolution satellite imagery. This paper presents the new research regarding representation of geospatial information, especially for 3D shape and appearance of virtual terrain, and describe framework for constructing real-time 3D model of large terrain based on high-resolution satellite imagery. It provides infrastructure of 3D simulation with geographical context. Details of standard-based approach for providing infrastructure of real-time 3D simulation using high-resolution satellite imagery are also presented. This work would facilitate interchange and interoperability across diverse systems and be usable by governments, industry scientists and general public.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.38 no.6_4
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• pp.1911-1923
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• 2022

The availability of high-resolution satellite images provides precise information without direct observation of the research target. Korea Multi-Purpose Satellite (KOMPSAT), also known as the Arirang satellite, has been developed and utilized for earth observation. The machine learning model was continuously proven as a good classifier in classifying remotely sensed images. This study aimed to compare the performance of the support vector machine (SVM) model in classifying the land cover of the Delaware River port area on high and medium-resolution images. Three optical images, which are KOMPSAT-2, KOMPSAT-3A, and Sentinel-2B, were classified into six land cover classes, including water, road, vegetation, building, vacant, and shadow. The KOMPSAT images are provided by Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI), and the Sentinel-2B image was provided by the European Space Agency (ESA). The training samples were manually digitized for each land cover class and considered the reference image. The predicted images were compared to the actual data to obtain the accuracy assessment using a confusion matrix analysis. In addition, the time-consuming training and classifying were recorded to evaluate the model performance. The results showed that the KOMPSAT-3A image has the highest overall accuracy and followed by KOMPSAT-2 and Sentinel-2B results. On the contrary, the model took a long time to classify the higher-resolution image compared to the lower resolution. For that reason, we can conclude that the SVM model performed better in the higher resolution image with the consequence of the longer time-consuming training and classifying data. Thus, this finding might provide consideration for related researchers when selecting satellite imagery for effective and accurate image classification.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.37 no.6_3
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• pp.1931-1942
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• 2021

As the utility of an optical satellite image with a high spatial resolution (i.e., fine-scale) has been emphasized, recently, various studies of the land surface monitoring using those have been widely carried out. However, the usefulness of fine-scale satellite images is limited because those are acquired at a low temporal resolution. To compensate for this limitation, the spatiotemporal data fusion can be applied to generate a synthetic image with a high spatio-temporal resolution by fusing multiple satellite images with different spatial and temporal resolutions. Since the spatio-temporal data fusion models have been developed for mid or low spatial resolution satellite images in the previous studies, it is necessary to evaluate the applicability of the developed models to the satellite images with a high spatial resolution. For this, this study evaluated the applicability of the developed spatio-temporal fusion models for KOMPSAT-3A and Sentinel-2 images. Here, an Enhanced Spatial and Temporal Adaptive Fusion Model (ESTARFM) and Spatial Time-series Geostatistical Deconvolution/Fusion Model (STGDFM), which use the different information for prediction, were applied. As a result of this study, it was found that the prediction performance of STGDFM, which combines temporally continuous reflectance values, was better than that of ESTARFM. Particularly, the prediction performance of STGDFM was significantly improved when it is difficult to simultaneously acquire KOMPSAT and Sentinel-2 images at a same date due to the low temporal resolution of KOMPSAT images. From the results of this study, it was confirmed that STGDFM, which has relatively better prediction performance by combining continuous temporal information, can compensate for the limitation to the low revisit time of fine-scale satellite images.

• Journal of Space Technology and Applications
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• v.3 no.3
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• pp.257-279
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• 2023

Korea Aerospace Research Institute has developed 6U Nano-Satellite high resolution video and image (HiREV) for the purpose of developing core technology for deep space exploration. The 6U HiREV Nano-Satellite has a mission of high-resolution image and video for earth observation, and the thermal pointing error between the lens and the camera module can occur due to the high temperature in camera module on mission mode. The thermal pointing error has a large effect on the resolution, so thermal design should solve it because the HiREV optical camera is developed based on commercial products that are the industrial level. So, when it operates in space, the thermal design is needed, because it has the best performance at room temperature. In this paper, three passive thermal designs were performed for the camera mission payload, and the thermal design was proved to be effective by performing on-orbit thermal analysis.

• Aerospace Engineering and Technology
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.63-72
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• 2003

On the basis of sensor types, satellites can be classified by two types, which are optical observation satellite and radar observation satellite. A satellite type is selected according to the specific mission. Optical observation satellite is more appropriate for getting high geometric resolution images and radar observation satellite is more appropriate for getting images independent of weather condition the more a demand of satellite increases, the more an importance of information increases. Therefore, development trend and state of earth observation satellite are surveyed and described in this paper. In the future, domestic development of satellites will be planned considering trend of satellite technologies.

• Proceedings of the KSRS Conference
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• v.2
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• pp.598-601
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• 2006

Satellite imagery may contain large regions covered with atmospheric aerosol. A high-resolution satellite imagery affected by non-homogenous aerosol cover should be processed for land cover study and perform the radiometric calibration that will allow its future application for Korea Multi-Purpose Satellite (KOMPSAT) data. In this study, aerosol signal was separated from high resolution satellite data based on the reflectance separation method. Since aerosol removal has a good sensitivity over bright surface such as man-made targets, aerosol optical thickness (AOT) retrieval algorithm could be used. AOT retrieval using Look-up table (LUT) approach for utilizing the transformed image to radiometrically compensate visible band imagery is processed and tested in the correction of satellite scenery. Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), EO-1/HYPERION data have been used for aerosol correction and AOT retrieval with different spatial resolution. Results show that an application of the aerosol detection for HYPERION data yields successive aerosol separation from imagery and AOT maps are consistent with MODIS AOT map.