• Proceedings of the KSR Conference
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• 2010.06a
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• pp.1951-1957
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• 2010

Study of Lunar exploration is progressed and manned lunar exploration is planned. In order to explore in Lunar, we need habitat to stay for a long time and system that mine, classify and transport materials. Lunar has dust that is very light-tiny. That is on the air for a long time so there are problems to adject transportation system such as vehicle. However, it can solve the problem to use pipe transportation system. This transportation system help materials move continually and is more effective than other transportation system such as train or vehicle. For those positive points, some experts studied about tube transportation systems. I introduce these system and find out factors that can be used in Lunar regolith transportation system. I suggest Lunar regolith transportation system, using the factors.

• 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 the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.41 no.12
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• pp.950-958
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• 2013

The Lunar orbiter is expected to be inserted into a ~300km low Earth orbit using Korea Space Launch Vehicle-II(KSLV-II). After the states are successfully determined with obtained tracking data, the Trans Lunar Injection(TLI) burn has to be done at appropriate epoch to send the lunar orbiter to the Moon. In this study, we describe in detail the mission scenario of the Korean lunar orbiter from the launch at NARO Space Center to lunar orbit insertion(LOI) stage following direct transfer trajectory. We investigate the launch window including launch azimuth, delta-V profile according to TLI and LOI burn positions. We also depict the visibility conditions of ground stations and solar eclipse duration to understand the characteristics of the direct transfer trajectory. This paper can be also helpful not only for overall understanding of ${\Delta}V$ trend by changing TOF and coasting time but for selecting launch epoch and control parameters to decrease fuel consumption.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.65-73
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• 2019

In this paper, we propose an algorithm that estimates the location of lunar rover using IMU and vision system instead of the dead-reckoning method using IMU and encoder, which is difficult to estimate the exact distance due to the accumulated error and slip. First, in the lunar environment, magnetic fields are not uniform, unlike the Earth, so only acceleration and gyro sensor data were used for the localization. These data were applied to extended kalman filter to estimate Roll, Pitch, Yaw Euler angles of the exploration rover. Also, the lunar module has special color which can not be seen in the lunar environment. Therefore, the lunar module were correctly recognized by applying the HSV color filter to the stereo image taken by lunar rover. Then, the distance between the exploration rover and the lunar module was estimated through SIFT feature point matching algorithm and geometry. Finally, the estimated Euler angles and distances were used to estimate the current position of the rover from the lunar module. The performance of the proposed algorithm was been compared to the conventional algorithm to show the superiority of the proposed algorithm.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.669-676
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• 2018

As the Moon's scientific, technological, and economic value has increased, major space agencies around the world are leading lunar exploration projects by establishing a road map to develop lunar resources and to construct a lunar base. In addition, as the lunar base construction requires huge amounts of resources from the Earth, lunar in-situ construction technology is being developed to produce construction materials from local lunar resources. On the other hand, the characteristics of lunar topography and resources vary spatially due to the crustal and volcanic activities inside the Moon as well as the solar wind and meteorites from outside the Moon. Therefore, in this paper, the geospatial analysis of lunar resource distribution was conducted to suggest regional consideration factors to apply the lunar in situ construction technologies. In addition, the lunar topographic condition to select construction sites was suggested to ensure the safe landing of a lunar lander and the easy maneuvering of a rover. The lunar topographic and resource information mainly from lunar orbiters were limited to the lunar surface with a low spatial resolution. Rover-based lunar exploration in the near future is expected to provide valuable information to develop lunar in situ construction technology and select candidate sites for lunar base construction.

• Current Industrial and Technological Trends in Aerospace
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.74-81
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• 2008

In this paper, the technical trends of the lunar exploration were studied by investigating the objectives of the mission of the recent lunar orbiters. The payloads of the lunar orbiter launched and planned since 1990 are rearranged and analyzed according to the objectives of the mission and the performance. In the future, it will be used to define the objectives of the mission and to make a plan for developing the payloads of the domestic lunar orbiter.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.44 no.8
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• pp.741-757
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• 2016

Over 60 years has passed since mankinds started space exploration beyond the Earth with lunar explorer Luna 1 launched by Soviet Union. Unprecedently remarkable outcomes have been obtained by sending unmanned spacecrafts to most planets in the solar system and having the lander landed on the approaching comet toward the Earth even though any evidence of life presence has not been discovered yet. Only moon is an natural object beyond the earth on which human beings landed. Many countries are planning to send humans to the moon or mars to build colonies and to survive with substantiality. Korean lunar exploration program has officially started as of 2016 after its plan including lunar exploration has been specified in the series of National Space Promotion Plan since Korea initiated space development in early 1990s. In this paper, the plan for Korean space exploration is summarized with reviewing overseas space exploration program status and trends.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.113-120
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• 2015

When humans explore the Moon, lunar caves will be an ideal base to provide a shelter from the hazards of radiation, meteorite impact, and extreme diurnal temperature differences. In order to ascertain the existence of caves on the Moon, it is best to visit the Moon in person. The Google Lunar X Prize(GLXP) competition started recently to attempt lunar exploration missions. Ones of those groups competing, plan to land on a pit of Lacus Mortis and determine the existence of a cave inside this pit. In this pit, there is a ramp from the entrance down to the inside of the pit, which enables a rover to approach the inner region of the pit. In this study, under the assumption of the existence of a cave in this pit, a 3D model was developed based on the optical image data. Since this model simulates the actual terrain, the rendering of the model agrees well with the image data. Furthermore, the 3D printing of this model will enable more rigorous investigations and also could be used to publicize lunar exploration missions with ease.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.51 no.10
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• pp.50-54
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• 2014

Evaluation of the possible or probable effects of environmental conditions which are temperature, radiation, dust as well as other possibilities in terms of meteoroids, seismicity, and no global magnetic field has been carried out for wireless communications on the lunar surface in this paper. The results considered in this paper can be utilized as a basic information on making efficient use of the design for wireless communications system in Korean lunar exploration project.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.40 no.4
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• pp.199-215
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• 2023

The Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO), the first South Korea lunar exploration probe, successfully arrived at the Moon on December, 2022 (UTC), following a 4.5-month ballistic lunar transfer (BLT) trajectory. Since the launch (4 August, 2022), the KPLO magnetometer (KMAG) has carried out various observations during the trans-lunar cruise phase and a 100 km altitude lunar polar orbit. KMAG consists of three fluxgate magnetometers capable of measuring magnetic fields within a ± 1,000 nT range with a resolution of 0.2 nT. The sampling rate is 10 Hz. During the originally planned lifetime of one year, KMAG has been operating successfully while performing observations of lunar crustal magnetic fields, magnetic fields induced in the lunar interior, and various solar wind events. The calibration and offset processes were performed during the TLC phase. In addition, reliabilities of the KMAG lunar magnetic field observations have been verified by comparing them with the surface vector mapping (SVM) data. If the KPLO's mission orbit during the extended mission phase is close enough to the lunar surface, KMAG will contribute to updating the lunar surface magnetic field map and will provide insights into the lunar interior structure and lunar space environment.