• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.41 no.6
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• pp.473-480
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• 2013

Researches for various lunar landing technologies are in progress for the lunar exploration program planned for early 2020s in Korea. This paper shows the integrated simulation for safe lunar landing guidance/control system in powered descent phase. Generally, the lunar lander uses on/off(bang-bang) controller to control the RCS jet thrusters instead of proportional controller. In this paper, the on/off controller using phase-plane switching function, and thruster selection algorithm to control sixteen thrusters are applied. Also additional guidance commands are calculated by a proposed fuzzy logic guidance algorithm. The simulation results show that lunar lander can follow a reference trajectory which is generated by optimization method, then land on the surface safely.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.46 no.2
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• pp.124-132
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• 2018

In this paper, landing stability evaluation of lunar lander considering various landing conditions was performed. The status of landing stability of the lunar lander is classified into stable landing, conditionally stable landing due to sliding and unstable landing due to tip-over. In particular, the quasi-static tip-over equation was rearranged considering the phenomena of lowering the center of gravity and extension of foot-pad interval of the landing gear. These results were compared by finite element model analysis results using a commercial software ABAQUS and its validity and accuracy were verified. The verified finite element model was used for examining the tendency of various environmental variables such as landing conditions, friction coefficient, lateral speed and slope of ground.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.45 no.9
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• pp.766-774
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• 2017

When a plume flow exhausted from a lunar lander descent engine impinges on the lunar surface, regolith particles on the lunar surface will be dispersed due to a plume-surface interaction. If the dispersed particles collide with the lunar lander, some adverse effects such as a performance degradation can be caused. Thus, this study tried to predict the plume flow behaviors using the CFD methods. A nozzle inside region was analyzed by a continuum flow model based on the Navier-Stokes equations while the plume behaviors of the outside nozzle was performed by comparing and analyzing the individual results using the continuum flow model and the DSMC method. As a result, it was possible to establish an optimum procedure of the plume analysis for the lunar lander descent engine in the vacuum condition. In the future, it is expected to utilize the present results for the development of the Korean lunar lander.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.42 no.12
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• pp.1037-1044
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• 2014

In this study, we designed a drop test system considering lunar surface environment and tested landing gear of experimental lunar lander. The lunar lander would be landed at soil place for soft landing. When the lunar lander touches down, the acceleration of the lander is largely affected by mechanical characteristics of the lunar soil. Accordingly, a drop test using lunar soil is needed to verify the performance of the lunar landing gear. Because the lunar soil is not available generally, we developed a lunar simulant KAUMLS(Korea Aerospace University Mechanical Luna Simulant) based on mechanical properties of the lunar soil of NASA's LUNA PROJECT. In addition, drop tests on steel plate and dry sand are performed to evaluate impact characteristics by the surface environment.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.39 no.4
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• pp.314-320
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• 2011

In this work, optimization of two-stage shock absorption system for lunar lander has been carried out. Because of complexity of impact phenomena of shock absorption system, a 1-D constitutive model is proposed to describe the behavior of shock absorption system. Quadratic polynomial regression meta-model is constructed by using a commercial software ABAQUS with the proposed 1-D constitutive model, and sequential approximate optimization of two-stage shock absorption system has been carried out along with the constructed meta-model. Through the optimization, it is verified that landing impact force on lunar lander can be considerably reduced by changing the cell size and foil thickness of honeycomb structure in two-stage shock absorption system.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.50 no.12
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• pp.867-875
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• 2022

The preliminary mission analysis of a lunar lander, which is mounted on the upper stage of a Korean space launch vehicle, is performed when landing on the moon through a trans-lunar injection maneuver after being injected into the earth's low orbit by th launcher in this paper. Both direct landing and orbital landing methods, which have each advantage and disadvantages, are applied and their transfer orbit characteristics are analyzed according to the launch date when launching in lunar October 2030. We also analyzed the launch dates which satisfying eclipse conditions, solar elevation conditions, and tracking time intervals such as the US lunar lander Surveyor-1. The obtained results show that the most appropriate launch date is the 4th day of lunar October in case of direct landing method, and the 3rd day in case of indirect landing method, since the argument of perigee of the trans-lunar injection orbit and eclipse conditions are favorable in the dates.

• 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.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aviation and Aeronautics
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.37-43
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• 2011

Lunar exploration program has been prepared with the aim of launch in the 2020's. As part of it, a lunar lander demonstrator has been developed which is the model for verifying all the system, such as structure, propulsion and control system before launch to deep space. After verifying all the system, the demonstrator will be evaluated by flight test. This paper deals with path tracking controller based on thrusters for the demonstrator. For this, first we derive equations of motion according to the allocation of thrusters and design the path tracking controller. The signal generated from the controller is continuous so PWPF(Pulse-Width Pulse-Frequency) modulator is adopted for generating on/off signal. Finally MATLAB simulation is performed for evaluating the path tracking ability and the final landing velocity.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers Conference
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• 2011.11a
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• pp.654-657
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• 2011

For the successful development of korean exploraton program, KARI started development of ground test model for lunar lander from last year. In order to secure core technology for space propulsion system, Koreanization of propellant tank is proceeding and it will be used for final assembly and test for ground test model. In this paper, the development result of titanum tank shell and verification test result was presented.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers Conference
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• 2012.05a
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• pp.42-45
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• 2012

As a basic research for the development of Korean lunar lander, propulsion system development for ground test is in progress. Design target is 220 N in ground thrust at 130 g/s flow rate, 200 psi chamber pressure. For the performance improvement, two type injector and catalyst bed was designed. For ground test, thrust measurement system using LM guide was developed and test was performed. The result shows 214.1 N thrust in atmosphere condition at 126.6 g/s flow rate.