• Journal of Satellite, Information and Communications
• /
• v.11 no.3
• /
• pp.86-91
• /
• 2016

KARI(Korea Aerospace Research Institute) has been developing the KPLO(Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter) for Korean first lunar exploration, and analysing various subjects for the mission success. Especially the performance of the communication is one of important factors, because massive scientific and technical data acquired by multiple payloads might be transferred to ground stations on the Earth. In this paper, we explained the study on the 1-day average downlink capacity based on the visibility analysis between ground stations and KPLO, and described its results.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
• /
• v.35 no.1
• /
• pp.39-46
• /
• 2018

In this study, the performance of ranging techniques for the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO) space communication system is investigated. KPLO is the first lunar mission of Korea, and pseudo-noise (PN) ranging will be used to support the mission along with sequential ranging. We compared the performance of both ranging techniques using the criteria of accuracy, acquisition probability, and measurement time. First, we investigated the end-to-end accuracy error of a ranging technique incorporating all sources of errors such as from ground stations and the spacecraft communication system. This study demonstrates that increasing the clock frequency of the ranging system is not required when the dominant factor of accuracy error is independent of the thermal noise of the ranging technique being used in the system. Based on the understanding of ranging accuracy, the measurement time of PN and sequential ranging are further investigated and compared, while both techniques satisfied the accuracy and acquisition requirements. We demonstrated that PN ranging performed better than sequential ranging in the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regime where KPLO will be operating, and we found that the T2B (weighted-voting balanced Tausworthe, voting v = 2) code is the best choice among the PN codes available for the KPLO mission.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
• /
• v.46 no.2
• /
• pp.57.2-57.2
• /
• 2021

An asteroid is important for understanding the condition of our solar system in early-stage because an asteroid, considered as a building block of the solar system, preserves the information when our solar system was formed. It has been continuously flowing into the near-Earth space, and then some asteroids have a probability of impacting Earth. Some asteroids have valuable minerals and volatiles for future resources in space activity. Korean government clarified, in the 3rd promotion plan for space activity, an asteroid sample return mission by the mid-2030s. However, it is almost impossible to do so based on only a single experience of an exploration mission to the Moon, Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter, which will be launched in mid-2022. We propose a Rendezvous Mission to Apophis(RMA), beneficial in terms of science, impact hazardous, resource, and technical readiness for the space exploration of Korea.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
• /
• v.43 no.1
• /
• pp.48.4-48.4
• /
• 2018

대한민국 달탐사 시험용 궤도선은 2020년 말에 발사를 예정으로 위성개발이 진행되고 있다. KPLO(Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter) 라고 명명된 달 궤도선에는 6개의 탑재체가 있으며, 경희대학교 우주탐사학과에서는 달 주위 공간 및 달 표면의 이상 자기장 영역을 관측하는 탑재체 (KMAG: Kplo MAGnetometer)를 개발하고 있다. 자기장센서는 3축 플럭스게이트 센서를 사용하며 약 0.2nT 이하의 분해능을 가지고 있다. 측정주기는 10Hz이며 총 무게는 3.5kg 이다. 1.2m 길이의 붐(Boom) 구조물 내부에 3개의 자기장 센서들을 설치하였으며 가능한 위성체로부터 거리를 두고 자기장을 측정하는 구조로 구성하였다. 시험모델 개발을 완료하고, 개발된 탑제체의 환경시험결과와 성능시험결과 요구조건에 부합되는 결과를 얻었다. KAMG는 국내최초의 심우주 탐사용 자기장 측정기로서 향 후, 행성 및 소행성 탐사 등에 활용하기 위한 기반 기술로 활용할 수 있을 것으로 기대한다.

• Aerospace Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.13 no.1
• /
• pp.120-128
• /
• 2014

Adventure of human race for space exploration is toward outer region of solar system. Recently the main targets of space explorations are becoming mainly the Mars, Venus and asteroids instead of the Moon which was the popular place human wants to explore. There are several technical challenges as spacecraft goes far and far away from the Earth, and among them communication protocol is one of the most challenging problems. In this paper, several international technical trends regarding deep space communication protocol technologies in an aspect of software implementation is presented. It is expected that these references are helpful for the development of the lunar orbiter pathfinder which is planned to be launched in 2017.