• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.138.2-138.2
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• 2012

Cave on the Moon is considered as the most appropriate place for human to live during the frontier lunar exploration. While the lava flows, the outer crust gets cooled and solidified. Then, the empty space is remained inside after lava flow stops. Such empty space is called the lava caves. Those lava tubes on the Earth are formed mostly by volcanic activity. However, the lava tubes on satellite like Moon and planet like Mars without volcanic activity are mostly formed by the lava flow inside of the crater made by large meteorite impact. Some part of lava tube with collapsed ceiling appears as the entrance of the cave. Such area looks like a deep crater so called a pit crater. Four large pit craters with diameter of > 60 m and depth of > 40 m are found without difficulty from Kaguya and LRO mission image archives. However, those are too deep to use as easily accessible human frontier base. Therefore, now we are going to identify some smaller lunar caves with accessible entrances using LRO camera images of 0.5 m/pixel resolution. Earth's lava caves and their entrances are well photographed by surface and aerial camera in immense volume. Thus, if the image data are sorted and archived well, those images can be used in comparison with the less distinct lunar cave and entrance images due to its smaller size. Then, we can identify the regions on the Moon where there exist caves with accessible entrances. The database will be also useful in modeling geomorphology for lunar and Martian caves for future artificial intelligence investigation of the caves in any size.

• Journal of Space Technology and Applications
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.52-65
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• 2022

Korea is near close the success on the indigenous launch vehicle KSLV-2 after the second test launch during the second half of 2022, and the satellite development has been already in the level of advanced country. After the such mature of satellite and launch vehicle technologies, Korea's space development main theme should be 'Space Exploration and Space Application', and paradigm should be changed from 'Hardware' to 'Scientific/Technological Mission', from 'Unmanned' to 'Manned'. Korea's prime space strategy should be the direction of expansion of space industry, creation of employment and secure the key technologies, improvement of convenience and safety of people. For the purpose it is necessary to start 'Manned Space Development' such that participation to 'Artemis and Gateway Program' in 20s' and manned Mars exploration in 30s' which would be carried out by means of global international cooperation, and which could be a good opportunity to explore the new area of space development and upgrade national technology capability. Taking advantage of this opportunity, it is required for Korea to join the international programs through developing indigenous challenging, sustainable Korean mission and hardware. Also selection of the 2^nd Korean Astronaut could draw national attention, especially could give dreams to young generation. Participation to the Artemis program could be the opportunity of entering the major space fairing nation and boosting up national pride. In this study we survey and analyze the Artemis Program in detail, and in conclusion we suggest the strategy of Korea's participation to the Artemis Program.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.237-250
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• 2021

A rover is a planetary surface exploration device designed to move across the ground on a planet or a planetary-like body. Exploration rovers are increasingly becoming a vital part of the search for scientific evidence and discoveries on a planetary satellite of the Sun, such as the Moon or Mars. Reliable behavior and predictable locomotion of a rover is important. Understanding soil behavior and its interaction with rover wheels-the terramechanics-is of great importance in rover exploration performance. Up to now, many researchers have adopted Bekker's semiempirical model to predict rover wheelsoil interaction, which is based on the assumption that soil is deformable when a pressure is applied to it. Despite this basic assumption of the model, the pressure-sinkage relation is not fully understood, and it continues to present challenges for rover designers. This article presents a new pressure-sinkage model based on dimensional analysis (DA) and results of bevameter tests. DA was applied to the test results in order to propose a new pressure-sinkage model by reducing physical quantitative parameters. As part of the work, a new bevameter was designed and built so that it could be successfully used to obtain a proper pressure-sinkage relation of Korean Lunar Soil Simulant (KLS-1). The new pressure-sinkage model was constructed by using three different sizes of flat plate diameters of the bevameter. The newly proposed model was compared successfully with other models for validation purposes.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.38 no.9
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• pp.875-881
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• 2010

During the lunar mission, spacecraft are subject to various unexpected disturbance sources such as third body attraction, solar pressure and operating impulsive maneuver error. Therefore, efficient trajectory correction maneuver (TCM) strategy must be required to follow the designed mission trajectory. In the early days of space exploration, the mission trajectory has been designed by using patched conic approach based on two-body dynamics for the lunar mission. Thus the TCM based on two-body dynamics has been usually adopted. However, with the advanced in computing power, the mission trajectory based on three-body dynamics is attempted recently. Thus, these approaches based on two-body dynamics are essentially different from real environment and large amount of energy for the TCM is required. In this work, we study the trajectory correction maneuver based on three-body dynamics.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.41 no.12
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• pp.1861-1867
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• 2016

Korea augmentation satellite system (KASS), which is a satellite-based augmentation system tailored for Korea, was launched for development in 2014. SBAS is a standard for aviation but it can also be utilized in non-aviation applications. The type and content of transmitted in SBAS data format are restricted. In order to utilize SBAS in fields that require the precision within centimeters, additional information has to be transmitted. It is important that data transmitted in nonstandard SBAS data not affect any operation of SBAS equipment. In this paper, we propose a non-standard SBAS data transmission method applicable to non-aviation applications that does not affect aviation SBAS receivers.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.281-298
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• 2023

Continuous research efforts are being devoted to unmanned mobile platforms for lunar exploration. There is an ongoing demand for real-time information processing to accurately determine the positioning and mapping of areas of interest on the lunar surface. To apply deep learning processing and analysis techniques to practical rovers, research on software integration and optimization is imperative. In this study, a foundational investigation has been conducted on real-time analysis of virtual lunar base construction site images, aimed at automatically quantifying spatial information of key objects. This study involved transitioning from an existing region-based object recognition algorithm to a boundary box-based algorithm, thus enhancing object recognition accuracy and inference speed. To facilitate extensive data-based object matching training, the Batch Hard Triplet Mining technique was introduced, and research was conducted to optimize both training and inference processes. Furthermore, an improved software system for object recognition and identical object matching was integrated, accompanied by the development of visualization software for the automatic matching of identical objects within input images. Leveraging satellite simulative captured video data for training objects and moving object-captured video data for inference, training and inference for identical object matching were successfully executed. The outcomes of this research suggest the feasibility of implementing 3D spatial information based on continuous-capture video data of mobile platforms and utilizing it for positioning objects within regions of interest. As a result, these findings are expected to contribute to the integration of an automated on-site system for video-based construction monitoring and control of significant target objects within future lunar base construction sites.

• Current Industrial and Technological Trends in Aerospace
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.3-13
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• 2008

The year 2007 marked two important anniversaries for space. The Soviet Union launched Sputnik 50 years ago on October 4. 1957. The 40th anniversary of the United Nations treaty on outer space was also marked in 2007. 2008 and 2007 were full of dramatic events of space activity as well : Success of Japan's first large lunar explorer 'KAGUYA'(SELENE) and China's 'Chang'e 1', launch of ISS laboratory module, 'Colombus' and 'Kibo', test of China's ASAT, and success of Korea's first astronaut program and so on. International government space budgets reached $78.3 billion in 2007, a strong growth rate of 36% over 2006, and the recently released Global Exploration Strategy, The Framework for Coordination is a set of guidelines for international cooperation among 14 of the world's space agencies. Worldwide space industry revenue grew by 20% over 2005, $106.1 billion in 2006 and $173.9 billion expected in 2007. This paper discusses the issues related to the Earth observation R&D trend and market in detail. Korea's 2008 government space spending is \316.4 billion, 2007 space industry revenue was $106 million. Several research projects are now underway and STSAT 2 will be launched by KSLV-1 at the Naro Space Center within this year.