• Advances in aircraft and spacecraft science
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.53-67
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• 2021

The increasing interest in the exploration of Mars stimulated the authors to study aerodynamic problems linked to space vehicles. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the aerodynamic effects of a flapped wing in collaborating with parachutes and retro-rockets to reduce velocity and with thrusters to control the spacecraft attitude. 3-D computations on a preliminary configuration of a blunt-cylinder, provided with flapped fins, quantified the beneficial influence of the fins. The present paper is focused on Aerodynamics of a wing section (NACA-0010) provided with a trailing edge flap. The influence of the flap deflection was evaluated by the increments of aerodynamic force and leading edge pitching moment coefficients with respect to the coefficients in clean configuration. The study was carried out by means of two Direct Simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) codes (DS2V/3V solving 2-D/3-D flow fields, respectively). A DSMC code is indispensable to simulate complex flow fields on a wing generated by Shock Wave-Shock Wave Interaction (SWSWI) due to the flap deflection. The flap angle has to be a compromise between the aerodynamic effectiveness and the increases of aerodynamic load and heat flux on the wing section lower surface.

• Journal of the Korean Geosynthetics Society
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.1-8
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• 2023

Space exploration is at the forefront of human scientific endeavors, and planetary exploration rovers play a critical role in studying planetary surfaces. Rover performance is especially vital for safely navigating steep terrain and delicate landscapes found on planets like Mars and the Moon. This paper offers a comprehensive overview of a landing testbed designed to simulate challenging extraterrestrial terrain and loose regolith. The paper briefly outlines lunar crater region topographical features and highlights the importance of these simulations in rover testing. It then explores previous landing testbed developments and describes the design process for a landing testbed to be installed in the dirty thermal vacuum chamber at the Korea Institute of Civil Engineering and Building Technology. Once realized, this proposed landing testbed will enable precise evaluations of rover mobility and exploration capabilities under lunar-like conditions, including high vacuum and extreme temperatures.

• Journal of Space Technology and Applications
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.26-43
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• 2023

As Korean first lunar probe, Danuri, succeeded in entering lunar orbit, Korean new space exploration plans such as Mars exploration can be expected. Korean space exploration payload is developed only in a limited field, so there is a need to create a new space exploration payload. In foreign countries, there is a mass spectrometer as a basic equipment for space exploration, and it is a very useful payload that encompasses the exploration of life through the analysis of organic matter as well as the observation of the atmosphere and volatile substances of the exploration target. However, Korea has never developed a mass spectrometer payload for space exploration, so it is necessary to secure technology in preparation for future space exploration. Before that, we look at the scientific achievements of foreign mass spectrometer payloads for space exploration and identify trends.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.46 no.6
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• pp.479-486
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• 2018

In order to ensure reliable navigation performance of a lunar exploration rover, navigation algorithms using additional sensors such as inertial measurement units and cameras are essential on lunar surface in the absence of a global navigation satellite system. Unprecedentedly, Visual Odometry (VO) using a stereo camera has been successfully implemented at the US Mars rovers. In this paper, we estimate the 6-DOF pose of the lunar exploration rover from gray images of a lunar-like terrains. The proposed algorithm estimates relative pose of consecutive images by sparse image alignment based semi-direct VO. In order to overcome vulnerability to non-linearity of direct VO, we add adaptive motion prior weights calculated from a linear function of the previous pose to the optimization cost function. The proposed algorithm is verified in lunar-like terrain dataset recorded by Toronto University reflecting the characteristics of the actual lunar environment.

• Journal of Information Processing Systems
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.1472-1488
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• 2019

Critical elements in the China's Lunar Exploration reside in that the lunar rover travels over the surrounding undetermined environment and it conducts scientific exploration under the ground control via teleoperation system. Such an interplanetary transportation mission teleoperation system belongs to the ground application system in deep space mission, which performs terrain reconstruction, visual positioning, path planning, and rover motion control by receiving telemetry data. It plays a vital role in the whole lunar exploration operation and its so-called trustworthy evidence must be assessed before and during its implementation. Taking ISO standards and China's national military standards as trustworthy evidence source, the net assessment model and net assessment method of teleoperation system are established in this paper. The multi-dimensional net assessment model covering the life cycle of software is defined by extracting the trustworthy evidences from trustworthy evidence source. The qualitative decisions are converted to quantitative weights through the net assessment method (NAM) combined with fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) and entropy weight method (EWM) to determine the weight of the evidence elements in the net assessment model. The paper employs the teleoperation system for interplanetary transportation as a case study. The experimental result drawn shows the validity and rationality of net assessment model and method. In the final part of this paper, the untrustworthy elements of the teleoperation system are discovered and an improvement scheme is established upon the "net result". The work completed in this paper has been applied in the development of the teleoperation system of China's Chang'e-3 (CE-3) "Jade Rabbit-1" and Chang'e-4 (CE-4) "Jade Rabbit-2" rover successfully. Besides, it will be implemented in China's Chang'e-5 (CE-5) mission in 2019. What's more, it will be promoted in the Mars exploration mission in 2020. Therefore it is valuable to the development process improvement of aerospace information system.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.153-166
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• 2004

Interplanetary trajectories using the gravity assists are studied for future Korean interplanetary missions. Verifications of the developed softwares and results were performed by comparing data from ESA's Mars Express mission and previous results. Among the Jupiter exploration mission scenarios, multi-planet gravity assist mission to Jupiter (Earth-Mars-Earth-Jupiter Gravity Assist, EMEJGA trajectory) requires minimum launch energy ($C_3$) of 29.231 $Km^2$/$S^2$ with 4.6 years flight times. Others, such as direct mission and single-planet(Mars) gravity assist mission, requires launch energy ($C_3$) of 75.656 $Km^2$/$S^2$ with 2.98 years flight times and 63.590 $Km^2$/$S^2$ with 2.33 years flight times, respectively. These results show that the planetary gravity assists can reduce launch energy, while EMEJGA trajectory requires the longer flight time than the other missions.

• Journal of Space Technology and Applications
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.85-103
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• 2021

Environmental Control & Life Support System (ECLSS) technology is essential for humans to live safely in space other than on Earth and celestial bodies (ex, Moon, Mars etc.) in our solar system. Life support systems generally consist of Air Management System (AMS), Water Recovery System (WRS), and Waste Management System (WMS), and it can enable humans to breathe and live in enclosed dwellings in outer space. First, this paper described the development trends of life support systems that have been developed under the leadership of NASA. In addition, we introduced the current development status of life support system in operation on the International Space Station (ISS) and prospected the development trends in Korea.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.381-387
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• 2012

The planetary exploration rover executes various missions after moving to the target point in an unknown environment in the shortest distance. Such missions include the researches for geological and climatic conditions as well as the existence of water or living creatures. If there is any obstacle on the way, it is detected by such sensors as ultrasonic sensor, infrared light sensor, stereo vision, and laser ranger finder. After the obtained data is transferred to the main controller of the rover, decisions can be made to either overcome or avoid the obstacle on the way based on the operating algorithm of the rover. All the planetary exploration rovers which have been developed until now receive the information of the height or width of the obstacle from such sensors before analyzing it in order to find out whether it is possible to overcome the obstacle or not. If it is decided to be better to overcome the obstacle in terms of the operating safety and the electric consumption of the rover, it is generally made to overcome it. Therefore, for the purpose of carrying out the planetary exploration task, it is necessary to design the proper suspension system of the rover which enables it to safely overcome any obstacle on the way on the surface in any unknown environment. This study focuses on the design of the new double 4-bar linkage type of suspension system applied to the Korea Aerospace Research Institute rover (a tentatively name) that is currently in the process of development by our institute in order to develop the planetary exploration rover which absolutely requires the capacity of overcoming any obstacle. Throughout this study, the negative moment which harms the capacity of the rover for overcoming an obstacle was induced through the dynamical modeling process for the rocker-bogie applied to the Mars exploration rover of the US and the improved version of rocker-bogie as well as the suggested double 4-bar linkage type of suspension system. Also, based on the height of the obstacle, a simulation was carried out for the negative moment of the suspension system before the excellence of the suspension system suggested through the comparison of responding characteristics was proved.

• The Korean Journal of Air & Space Law and Policy
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.313-374
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• 2020

The idea of creating a new International Space Agency (ISA) is only my academic and practical opinion. It is necessary for us to establish ISA as an international organization for the efficient and rapid exploitation of natural resources in the moon, Mars and other celestial bodies. The establishment of ISA as a new international regime is based on the Article 11, 5 and Article 18 of the 1979 Moon Agreement. In order to establish as a preliminary procedure, it needs to make a "Draft for the Convention on the Establishment of an International Space Agency" among the space-faring countries. In this paper, I was examined the domestic space legislation in the United States, Luxembourg, European Space Agency, China, Japan, the Republic of Korea as well as space exploration and planning of the moons, Mars, Asteroids, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Titan and Other Celestial Bodies. The creation of an ISA would lead to a strengthening of the cooperation needed essentially by the developed countries towards joint and cooperative undertakings in space and would act as a catalyst for the space exploration and exploitation of the moon, Mars and other celestial bodies. It will be managed effectively and centrally the exploitation and exploitation of space the natural resources, technology, manpower and finances as an independent organization in order to get the benefit of the space developed countries by ISA. It is desirable and necessary for us to establish ISA in order to promote cooperation in space policy, law, science technology and industry among the space developed countries in the near future. The establishment of the ISA will be promoted the international cooperation among the space-faring countries in exploration and exploitations of the natural resources in the moon and other celestial bodies. I would propose the "Draft for the Convention for the Establishment of an International Space Agency." in refering the "Convention for the Establishment of a European Space Agency." This "Draft for the Convention Convention for the Establishment of an ISA" must pass the abovementioned "Draft for the Convention" by two-third majority of Diplomatic Conference in the UNCOPUOS. Finally, a very important point is need that a political drive at the highest level and a solemn statement by heads of state of the space devloped countries including the United Nations for the space exploitation of the medium and long term. It should be noted that this political drive will be necessary not only to set up the organization, but also during a subsequent period. It is desirable and necessary for us to establish the ISA in order to develop the space industry, to strengthen friendly relations and to promote research cooperation among the space-faring countries based on the new ideology and creative ideas. If the heads of the superpowers including the United Nations will be agreed to establish ISA at a summit conference, 1 am sure that it is possible to establish an ISA in the near future.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.45 no.10
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• pp.836-843
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• 2017

In lunar exploration, the necessity of utilizing rover is verified by the examples of the Soviet Union and China and the similar Mars missions of the United States. In order to achieve the successful management of a lunar rover, a high precision navigation technique is required, and accordingly, high precision initial alignment is essential. Even though it is general to perform initial alignment in a steady state, a multiposition alignment technique is applied when high performance is needed. On the lunar surface, however, the performance of initial alignment decreases from that on Earth, and it cannot be improved by applying multiposition alignment method owing to certain constraints of lunar environment. In this paper, a sun sensor aided multiposition alignment technique is proposed. The measurement model for a sun vector is established, and its observability analysis is performed. The performance of the proposed algorithm is verified through computer simulations, and the results show the estimation performance is improved dramatically.