• Journal of Space Technology and Applications
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• v.4 no.3
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• pp.185-198
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• 2024

Korea Astronomy and Space science Institute (KASI) partnered with the Australian National University (ANU) to develop the adaptive optics (AO) system at the Geochang observatory with a 100 cm optical telescope for multiple applications, including space geodesy, space situational awareness and Korean space missions. The AO system is designed to get high resolution images of space objects with lower magnitude than 10 by using themselves as a natural guide star, and achieve a Strehl ratio larger than 20% in the environment of good seeing with a fried parameter of 12-15 cm. It will provide the imaging of space objects up to 1,000 km as well as its information including size, shape and orientation to improve its orbit prediction precision for collision avoidance between active satellites and space debris. In this paper, we address not only the design of AO system, but also analyze the images of stellar objects. It is also demonstrated that the AO System is achievable to a near diffraction limited full width at half maximum (FWHM) by analyzing stellar images.

• Journal of Space Technology and Applications
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.23-32
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• 2021

The high-level Space Situational Awareness (SSA) objective is to provide to the users dependable, accurate and timely information in order to support risk management on orbit and during re-entry and support safe and secure operation of space assets and related services. Therefore the risk assessment for the re-entry of space objects should be managed nationally. In this research, the Software for Re-Entry Prediction of space objects (SREP) was developed for national SSA system. In particular, the rate of change of the drag coefficient is estimated through a newly proposed Drag Scale Factor Estimation (DSFE), and is used for high-precision orbit propagator (HPOP) up to an altitude of 100 km to predict the re-entry time and position of the space object. The effectiveness of this re-entry prediction is shown through the re-entry time window and ground track of space objects falling in real events, Grace-1, Grace-2, Tiangong-1, and Chang Zheng-5B Rocket body. As a result, through analysis 12 hours before the final re-entry time, it is shown that the re-entry time window and crash time can be accurately predicted with an error of less than 20 minutes.

• The Korean Journal of Air & Space Law and Policy
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.79-123
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• 2019

This article refers to the Space security legislation in South Korea and Poland. Both states have already prepared some legislation on Security in Space- the question is the following- if there is still a need of progress and if those presented legislation are sufficient for the practical purposes of the peaceful uses of Outer Space. South Korea is a much more experienced state in using space than Poland; the same seems with the legislation. Poland as less experienced state in this matter has lots of ambitions to create the efficient legislation on Space security, so it must follow the good examples of states and institution in this matter. One of them is Korea. On the other state, Poland as a Member of EU must implement the European law in space security (in particular SSA), which seems to be priceless and efficient for the international cooperation in Space.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.349-355
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• 2015

As a governmentally approved domestic entity for Space Situational Awareness, Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI) is developing and operating an optical telescopes system, Optical Wide-field PatroL (OWL) Network. During the test phase of this system, it is necessary to determine the range of brightness of the observable satellites. We have defined standard magnitude for Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites to calibrate their luminosity in terms of standard parameters such as distance, phase angle, and angular rate. In this work, we report the optical brightness range of five LEO Satellites using OWL-Net.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.46 no.1
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• pp.61.1-61.1
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• 2021

OWL-Net (Optical Wide-field patroL Network) is the first space situational awareness facility of its kind in South Korea which consists of five identical 0.5 m wide-field telescopes with 4K by 4K CCDs. The five stations are located in Mongolia, Morocco, Israel, United States, and South Korea. They are being operated in fully autonomous mode with the minimum human intervention. The primary objective of OWL-Net is to track Korean domestic satellites. In addition, it can be possible to conduct time-series photometry of bright solar system objects. We will present the system overview of the OWL-Net telescopes and progress report.

• Journal of Space Technology and Applications
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.13-29
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• 2022

Recently, the number of space objects around the Earth has increased rapidly, necessitating systematic space risk management. This paper proposes a dual-mode framework for assessing the risk of collision between space objects. The proposed framework consists of microscopic and macroscopic modes. The former focuses on one-to-one collision events, and the latter assesses the overall collision risk inside a cell located in space. Two risk assessment case studies using the proposed two modes demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework.

• Journal of Satellite, Information and Communications
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.121-129
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• 2012

Any development plan of a Korean space-based navigational system has been neither designed nor introduced yet. However, the demand for the development of a domestic regional satellite navigation system can be originated from the outside of market. The growing dependency on satellite navigational systems in Korea eventually requires the retainment and the operation of a domestic navigational satellite system. There is not many choices on the orbit designs and the system design concepts of a regional augmented navigation satellite system or a regional navigation satellite system for the service on the vicinity of the Korean peninsular. Space situational awareness (SSA) has been a rising issue for both national security and more realistic space business in Korea. Also SSA related technologies in Korea is a newly inaugurated area and is necessary to generate a navigation messages and maintain a future Korean navigation satellite system. In this study, the availability of Japanese Quasi Zenith Satellite System (QZSS) expected to be deployed definitely sooner than Korean counter-part is analyzed. The availability of the similar configured system over Korea is investigated with assumed QZSS type orbit. Also, feasible configuration of orbits for domestic navigation satellite system is suggested. And the observability of a ground-based optical tracking system as a secondary tracking capability is analyzed.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.137-146
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• 2016

The correlation between meteorological data collected at the optical wide-field patrol network (OWL-Net) Station No. 1 and the seeing of satellite optical observation data was analyzed. Meteorological data and satellite optical observation data from June 2014 to November 2015 were analyzed. The analyzed meteorological data were the outdoor air temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, and cloud index data, and the analyzed satellite optical observation data were the seeing full-width at half-maximum (FWHM) data. The annual meteorological pattern for Mongolia was analyzed by collecting meteorological data over four seasons, with data collection beginning after the installation and initial set-up of the OWL-Net Station No. 1 in Mongolia. A comparison of the meteorological data and the seeing of the satellite optical observation data showed that the seeing degrades as the wind strength increases and as the cloud cover decreases. This finding is explained by the bias effect, which is caused by the fact that the number of images taken on the less cloudy days was relatively small. The seeing FWHM showed no clear correlation with either temperature or relative humidity.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.253-261
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• 2018

Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI) has been developing the space optical and laser tracking (SOLT) system for space geodesy, space situational awareness, and Korean space missions. The SOLT system comprises satellite laser ranging (SLR), adaptive optics (AO), and debris laser tracking (DLT) systems, which share numerous subsystems, such as an optical telescope and tracking mount. It is designed to be capable of laser ranging up to geosynchronous Earth orbit satellites with a laser retro-reflector array, space objects imaging brighter than magnitude 10, and laser tracking low Earth orbit space debris of uncooperative targets. For the realization of multiple functions in a novel configuration, the SOLT system employs a switching mirror that is installed inside the telescope pedestal and feeds the beam path to each system. The SLR and AO systems have already been established at the Geochang station, whereas the DLT system is currently under development and the AO system is being prepared for testing. In this study, the design and development of the SOLT system are addressed and the SLR data quality is evaluated compared to the International Laser Ranging Service (ILRS) tracking stations in terms of single-shot ranging precision. The analysis results indicate that the SLR system has a good ranging performance, to a few millimeters precision. Therefore, it is expected that the SLR system will not only play an important role as a member of the ILRS tracking network, but also contribute to future Korean space missions.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.35-43
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• 2019

The Optical Wide-field patroL-Network (OWL-Net) is a global optical network for Space Situational Awareness in Korea. The primary operational goal of the OWL-Net is to track Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites operated by Korea and to monitor the Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) region near the Korean peninsula. To obtain dense measurements on LEO tracking, the chopper system was adopted in the OWL-Net's back-end system. Dozens of angle-only measurements can be obtained for a single shot with the observation mode for LEO tracking. In previous work, the reduction process of the LEO tracking data was presented, along with the mechanical specification of the back-end system of the OWL-Net. In this research, we describe an integrity assessment method of time-position matching and verification of results from real observations of LEO satellites. The change rate of the angle of each streak in the shot was checked to assess the results of the matching process. The time error due to the chopper rotation motion was corrected after re-matching of time and position. The corrected measurements were compared with the simulated observation data, which were taken from the Consolidated Prediction File from the International Laser Ranging Service. The comparison results are presented in the In-track and Cross-track frame.