• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.171-186
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• 2009

Various Earth-Moon transfer trajectories are designed and analyzed to prepare the future Korea's Lunar missions. Minimum fuel trajectory solutions are obtained for the departure year of 2017, 2020, 2022, and every required mission phases are analyzed from Earth departure to the final lunar mission orbit. N-body equations of motion are formulated which include the gravitational effect of the Sun, Earth and Moon. In addition, accelerations due to geopotential harmonics, Lunar J2 and solar radiation pressures are considered. Impulsive high thrust is assumed as the main thrusting method of spacecraft with launcher capability of KSLV-2 which is planned to be developed. For the method of injecting a spacecraft into a trans Lunar trajectory, both direct shooting from circular parking orbit and shooting from the multiple elliptical intermediate orbits are adapted, and their design results are compared and analyzed. In addition, spacecraft's visibility from Deajeon ground station are constrained to see how they affect the magnitude of TLI(Trans Lunar Injection) maneuver. The results presented in this paper includes launch opportunities, required optimal maneuver characteristics for each mission phase as well as the trajectory characteristics and numerous related parameters. It is confirmed that the final mass of Korean lunar explorer strongly depends onto the initial parking orbit's altitude and launcher's capability, rather than mission start time.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Electromagnetic Engineering and Science
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.208-216
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• 2014

Ground station in lunar mission is responsible to receive telemetry signal including sensor data from lunar orbiter and/or lander. At preliminary stage of developing this ground station, receiving performance such as antenna size and noise temperature should be designed on the basis of link budget analysis. When the antenna of ground station is pointing to the moon to communicate with lunar orbiter and/or lander, noise level is supposed to be increasing due to the lunar flux density. It means that the moon is working as a noise source to degrade receiving performance when antenna is pointing to the moon. Antenna noise temperature contributed by the moon was firstly calculated and secondary validated by using test configuration in this paper. Consequently, it was shown that antenna noise temperature caused by the moon was quietly matched with measured one and G/T degradation of receiving system in lunar mission can be calculated depending on antenna size and frequency.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.37 no.3
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• pp.199-208
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• 2020

This paper presents a kinematic ephemeris generator for Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO) and its performance test results. The kinematic ephemeris generator consists of a ground ephemeris compressor and an onboard ephemeris calculator. The ground ephemeris compressor has to compress desired orbit propagation data by using an interpolation method in a ground system. The onboard ephemeris calculator can generate spacecraft ephemeris and the Sun/Moon ephemeris in onboard computer of the KPLO. Among many interpolation methods, polynomial interpolation with uniform node, Chebyshev interpolation, Hermite interpolation are tested for their performances. As a result of the test, it is shown that all the methods have some cases that meet requirements but there are some performance differences. It is also confirmed that, the Chebyshev interpolation shows better performance than other methods for spacecraft ephemeris generation, and the polynomial interpolation with uniform nodes yields good performance for the Sun/Moon ephemeris generation. Based on these results, a Kinematic ephemeris generator is developed for the KPLO mission. Then, the developed ephemeris generator can find an approximating function using interpolation method considering the size and accuracy of the data to be transmitted.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.43 no.11
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• pp.984-997
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• 2015

Chang'e-3 consisting of a lunar lander and exploration rover was launched on December 1, 2013 aboard a Long March 3B rocket flying from Xichang space launch center. Chang'e-3 was inserted into the lunar orbit after about a 5-day transit to the Moon and landed on the targeted landing site after orbiting around the Moon for 8 days. The successful landing of the Chang'e-3 gives a lot of help to analyze the future needs of the subsystem technologies and to figure out the trajectory from launch to lunar landing as well as operation sequences in the development of Korean lunar exploration is scheduled. Therefore, the configuration and analysis of overall mission of Chang'e-3 is performed based on the public information from the press and website. As a result, overall mission trajectory is reconstructed by solving boundary condition and then estimating control variable. Visibility status and eclipse status also analyzes so communication and power charge condition is as good as to operate lunar lander. Mass budget of the lander is derived using ${\Delta}V$ according to specific impulse.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.46 no.12
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• pp.1028-1036
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• 2018

KARI plans to launch Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO) to the Moon by December 2020 for the first step of the Korea Lunar Exploration Project. This orbiter will be launched to obtain lunar exploration technologies and science data in advance before launching a main orbiter and a lunar probe. This paper describes the verification of thermal design for the orbiter. It is exposed to more extreme thermal environment than that of low Earth orbit satellite due to the heavy infrared emission of the Moon. Accordingly, a thermal design considering this environment is needed to maintain the temperature of payloads and components equipped in the orbiter within operating temperature range in all orbits. We performed the thermal analysis for Earth-Moon transfer orbit, lunar mission orbit and lunar eclipse required for thermal design verification of the lunar orbiter. As a result, this thermal design met the design requirements.

• Journal of Space Technology and Applications
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• v.1 no.3
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• pp.375-395
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• 2021

Korea plans to send a pathfinder lunar orbiter to the Moon for the first time in August 2022. And according to the 3rd Basic Plan for Space Development Promotion, the plan is to send a lunar lander to the Moon before 2030. The selection of the lunar landing area can be varied depending on the lunar lander's mission, therefore preliminary research on the lunar landing sites is essential for a successful lunar exploration mission design. This paper analyzed the characteristics of major regions among 14 proposed regions using NASA's MoonTrek based on the data on the candidate areas for the major moon landing proposed sites by the NASA workshop in 2018. And we looked into what kind of future moon landing missions are suitable for these areas. We also looked at the importance of lunar Antarctica area through the recent lunar landing areas of Moon landing countries and Artemis plan.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.323-333
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• 2016

In this study, the uncertainty requirements for orbit, attitude, and burn performance were estimated and analyzed for the execution of the $1^{st}$ lunar orbit insertion (LOI) maneuver of the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO) mission. During the early design phase of the system, associate analysis is an essential design factor as the $1^{st}$ LOI maneuver is the largest burn that utilizes the onboard propulsion system; the success of the lunar capture is directly affected by the performance achieved. For the analysis, the spacecraft is assumed to have already approached the periselene with a hyperbolic arrival trajectory around the moon. In addition, diverse arrival conditions and mission constraints were considered, such as varying periselene approach velocity, altitude, and orbital period of the capture orbit after execution of the $1^{st}$ LOI maneuver. The current analysis assumed an impulsive LOI maneuver, and two-body equations of motion were adapted to simplify the problem for a preliminary analysis. Monte Carlo simulations were performed for the statistical analysis to analyze diverse uncertainties that might arise at the moment when the maneuver is executed. As a result, three major requirements were analyzed and estimated for the early design phase. First, the minimum requirements were estimated for the burn performance to be captured around the moon. Second, the requirements for orbit, attitude, and maneuver burn performances were simultaneously estimated and analyzed to maintain the $1^{st}$ elliptical orbit achieved around the moon within the specified orbital period. Finally, the dispersion requirements on the B-plane aiming at target points to meet the target insertion goal were analyzed and can be utilized as reference target guidelines for a mid-course correction (MCC) maneuver during the transfer. More detailed system requirements for the KPLO mission, particularly for the spacecraft bus itself and for the flight dynamics subsystem at the ground control center, are expected to be prepared and established based on the current results, including a contingency trajectory design plan.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.255-267
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• 2013

In this research, the ground contact opportunity for the fictitious low lunar orbiter is analyzed to prepare for a future Korean lunar orbiter mission. The ground contact opportunity is basically derived from geometrical relations between the typical ground stations at the Earth, the relative positions of the Earth and Moon, and finally, the lunar orbiter itself. Both the cut-off angle and the orbiter's Line of Sight (LOS) conditions (weather orbiter is located at near or far side of the Moon seen from the Earth) are considered to determine the ground contact opportunities. Four KOMPSAT Ground Stations (KGSs) are assumed to be Korea's future Near Earth Networks (NENs) to support lunar missions, and world-wide separated Deep Space Networks (DSNs) are also included during the contact availability analysis. As a result, it is concluded that about 138 times of contact will be made between the orbiter and the Daejeon station during 27.3 days of prediction time span. If these contact times are converted into contact duration, the duration is found to be about 8.55 days, about 31.31% of 27.3 days. It is discovered that selected four KGSs cannot provide continuous tracking of the lunar orbiter, meaning that international collaboration is necessary to track Korea's future lunar orbiter effectively. Possible combinations of world-wide separated DSNs are also suggested to compensate for the lack of contact availability with only four KGSs, as with primary and backup station concepts. The provided algorithm can be easily modified to support any type of orbit around the Moon, and therefore, the presented results could aid further progress in the design field of Korea's lunar orbiter missions.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.311-314
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• 2005

We report the current status of Japanese lunar exploration SELENE (SELenological and ENgineering Explorer). As of the end of 2004, scientific instruments onboard the Main Orbiter are under final checkout before they are provided to the proto-flight-model (PFM) integration test. Also, we present the future perspectives of the lunar based instruments and facilities. 'In-situ Lunar Orientation Mea-surement (ILOM)' experiment measures the lunar rotation with high accuracy by tracking stars on the Moon with a small photo-zenith-tube type optical telescope. A basic idea of a radio telescope array of very low frequency range on the lunar far-side is also mentioned.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.97-106
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• 2010

To prepare for a Korean lunar orbiter mission, a precise lunar orbit propagator; Yonsei precise lunar orbit propagator (YSPLOP) is developed. In the propagator, accelerations due to the Moon's non-spherical gravity, the point masses of the Earth, Moon, Sun, Mars, Jupiter and also, solar radiation pressures can be included. The developed propagator's performance is validated and propagation errors between YSPOLP and STK/Astrogator are found to have about maximum 4-m, in along-track direction during 30 days (Earth's time) of propagation. Also, it is found that the lifetime of a lunar polar orbiter is strongly affected by the different degrees and orders of the lunar gravity model, by a third body's gravitational attractions (especially the Earth), and by the different orbital inclinations. The reliable lifetime of circular lunar polar orbiter at about 100 km altitude is estimated to have about 160 days (Earth's time). However, to estimate the reasonable lifetime of circular lunar polar orbiter at about 100 km altitude, it is strongly recommended to consider at least $50\;{\times}\;50$ degrees and orders of the lunar gravity field. The results provided in this paper are expected to make further progress in the design fields of Korea's lunar orbiter missions.