• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
• /
• v.46 no.1
• /
• pp.68-77
• /
• 2018

In order to analyze the overall characteristics of the lunar orbiter, the Variable Coast method, which can be launched everyday, is applied to the 3.5 phasing loop transfer trajectory. The mission scenario for the entire process from launching to entering the lunar orbit is set up and performed simulation by selecting the launch pad and launch vehicle. In particular, the SEM(Satellite-Earth-Moon) angle defined in Earth-Moon rotating frame is an important constraint to comprehensively evaluate the 3.5 phasing loop transfer trajectory. The simulation using SEM angle is analyzed from various viewpoints such as launch epoch, coast duration, perigee altitude and ${\Delta}V$ not only trans-lunar trajectory but lunar orbit insertions and the optimum SEM angle is suggested in this study. It is expected that this results will be helpful to evaluate the characteristics of the 3.5 phasing loop transfer trajectory according to the launch vehicle selection by comparison with Fixed Coast analysis results in the future.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
• /
• v.46 no.2
• /
• pp.167-174
• /
• 2018

The heater is applied to the lunar lander for securing its survivability under severe lunar thermal environment during 14 days of night time. For this, the heater on/off set-points shall be determined to minimize the power consumption due to the limited power generation of lunar lander during night time. In addition, the temperature changes of the lander according to the heater set-point is also an important factor because it is related to thermo-mechanical reliability on solder joint of on-board electronics. In this study, we investigated thermo-mechanical reliability on solder joint according to the heater set-point by using commercial reliability and a life prediction tool of Sherlock based on the thermal analysis results of lunar lander that is a year of the mission lifetime.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
• /
• v.41 no.5
• /
• pp.366-372
• /
• 2013

Korean lunar explorer will be launched by korean launcher KSLV-2 in the 2020s in accordance with national space development strategy. Korean lunar explorer is composed of two unmanned orbiter and lander and should be developed as small size and light weight within 550kg of launch mass due to launcher's loading capability. A structure of lunar explorer is required to have sufficient stiffness and strength under launch and operational environment as well as to accommodate mission equipment. This paper describes the result of a preliminary study on structural model design for korean lunar explorer.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
• /
• v.46 no.5
• /
• pp.402-409
• /
• 2018

In this paper, we propose a lunar landing scenario of a robotic lunar landing mission and implements an optimal landing trajectory at the powered descent phase based on the proposed scenario. The change of attitude of the lunar lander in the power descent phase affects not only the amount of fuel used but also sensor operation of image based navigation. Therefore, the attitude angular velocity is included in the cost function of the optimal control problem to minimize the unnecessary attitude change when the optimal landing trajectory generates at powered descent phase of the lunar landing. The influence of the change of attitude angular velocity on the optimal landing trajectory are analyzed by adjusting the weight of the attitude angular velocity. Based on the results, we suggest the proper weight to generate the optimal landing trajectory in order to minimize the influence of the attitude angular velocity.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
• /
• v.32 no.2
• /
• pp.121-125
• /
• 2015

At the suggestion of the NASA Meteoroid Environment Office (NASA/MEO), which promotes lunar impact monitoring worldwide during NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) mission period (launched Sept. 2013), we set up a video observation system for lunar impact flashes using a 16-inch educational telescope at Chungnam National University. From Oct. 2013 through Apr. 2014, we recorded 80 hours of video observation of the unilluminated part of the crescent moon in the evening hours. We found a plausible candidate impact flash on Feb. 3, 2014 at selenographic longitude $2.1^{\circ}$ and latitude $25.4^{\circ}$. The flash lasted for 0.2 s and the light curve was asymmetric with a slow decrease after a peak brightness of $8.7{\pm}0.3mag$. Based on a star-like distribution of pixel brightness and asymmetric light curve, we conclude that the observed flash was due to a meteoroid impact on the lunar surface. Since unequivocal detection of an impact flash requires simultaneous observation from at least two sites, we strongly recommend that other institutes and universities in Korea set up similar inexpensive monitoring systems involving educational or amateur telescopes, and that they collaborate in the near future.

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

• Bulletin of the Korean Space Science Society
• /
• 2011.04a
• /
• pp.24.4-24.4
• /
• 2011

Frozen orbit concept is very useful in designing particular mission orbits including the Sun-synchronous and minimum altitude variation orbits. In this work, variety of frozen and Sun-synchronous orbit conditions around the Moon is investigated and analyzed. The first two zonal harmonics of the Moon, J2 and J3, are considered to determine mean orbital elements to be a frozen orbit. To check the long-term behavior of a frozen orbit, formerly developed YonSei Precise Lunar Orbit Propagator (YSPLOP) is used. First, frozen orbit solutions without conditions to be the Sun-synchronous orbit is investigated. Various mean semi-major axes having between ranges from 1,788 km to 1,938 km with inclinations from 30 deg to 150 deg are considered. It is found that a polar orbit (90 deg of inclination) having 100 km of altitude requires the orbital eccentricity of about 0.01975 for a frozen orbit. Also, mean apolune and perilune altitudes for this case is about 136.301 km and 63.694 km, respectively. Second, frozen orbit solutions with additional condition to be the Sun-synchronous orbit is investigated. It is discovered that orbital inclinations are increased from 138.223 deg to 171.553 deg when mean altitude ranged from 50 km to 200 km. For the most usual mission altitude at the Moon (100 km), the Sun-synchronous orbit condition is satisfied with the eccentricity of 0.01124 and 145.235 deg of inclination. For this case, mean apolune and perilune altitudes are found to be about 120.677 km and 79.323 km, respectively. The results analyzed in this work could be useful to design a preliminary mapping orbit as well as to estimate basic on-board payloads' system requirements, for a future Korea's lunar orbiter mission. Other detailed perturbative effects should be considered in the further study, to analyze more accurate frozen orbit conditions at the Moon.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
• /
• v.43 no.1
• /
• pp.71.2-71.2
• /
• 2018

태양계 질량의 대부분은 플라즈마, 기체, 또는 액체 상태로 존재하며, 극히 일부만이 고체 즉 암석과 광물로 존재한다. 하지만, 반응 특히 혼합(mixing)이 일어나는 속도가 매우 느린 고체의 특성상 태양계의 탄생과 진화 과정의 기록은 고체태양계 물질에 더 잘 보관되어 있다. 지구를 제외한 고체 태양계 물질을 확보하기 위해서는 지구로 낙하한 암석인 운석(meteorites)을 발견하거나, 우주로 나가 시료를 가져와야 한다. 아폴로 미션(Apollo mission)에 의한 월석(lunar rocks) 채취(Papike et al., 1998), 하야부사 미션(Hayabusa mission)에 의한 소행성(asteroid) 시료 채취(Nakamura et al., 2011), 스타더스트 미션(Stardust mission)에 의한 혜성 시료 채취(Zolensky et al., 2006) 등이 후자에 속한다. 능동적으로 가져온 시료는 아직까지는 그 종류와 양에서 운석에 비해 매우 부족하므로 현재까지 우리가 알고 있는 고체 태양계에 관한 대부분은 운석 연구를 통해 얻어졌다. 운석은 크게 미분화운석 즉 콘드라이트(chondrites)와 분화운석(differentiated meteorites)으로 구분한다. 분화운석 중 일부는 달운석(lunar meteorites) 또는 화성운석(martian meteorites)이며, 나머지 분화운석과 콘드라이트는 암석-지구화학적 특징과 성인적 연관성에 의해 다양한 그룹으로 세분되는데 각 그룹은 하나의, 또는 둘 이상의 매우 유사한, 소행성에서 유래한 것으로 해석된다(Krot et al., 2014; 최변각 2009). 다양한 종류의 운석과 구성 광물에 포함된 기록으로는 (1) 태양계 이전 존재한 항성의 대기에서 생성된 광물, 즉 선태양계 광물(presolar grains), (2) 태양계 성운 탄생과 각 진화 단계의 정확한 시기, (3) 태양계 성운의 화학조성-동위원소 조성, 온도-압력 조건 등을 포함한 물리-화학적 특징, (4) 가스-먼지로부터 미행성, 소행성, 행성으로의 진화 과정, (5) 행성 진화의 열원, (6) 소행성 핵의 생성 과정 등이 있다. 강연에서는 이들을 간략히 살펴보고자 한다. 운석연구 등을 통해 태양계 생성과 진화과정에 관한 다양한 정보가 축적되었지만, 앞으로 연구할 것들이 더 많다. 또한 태양계 물질 중에는 운석의 형태로 지구로 들어왔거나 앞으로 들어올 수 있는 것도 있지만 그렇지 않은 것도 있다. 가스나 기체의 경우가 그러할 것이며, 고체지만 결합이 약해 일부라도 원형을 유지한 채 대기권을 통과 할 수 없는 것도 있을 것이다. 또 공전궤도나 중력 등 물리적 이유로 지구권 진입이 불가능한 것도 있다. 이러한 태양계 구성원에는 우리가 아직까지 얻지 못한 정보들이 다량 보존되어 있을 것이다. 미래의 태양계탐사가 기대되는 이유 중 하나이다.

• Journal of Satellite, Information and Communications
• /
• v.11 no.3
• /
• pp.86-91
• /
• 2016

KARI(Korea Aerospace Research Institute) has been developing the KPLO(Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter) for Korean first lunar exploration, and analysing various subjects for the mission success. Especially the performance of the communication is one of important factors, because massive scientific and technical data acquired by multiple payloads might be transferred to ground stations on the Earth. In this paper, we explained the study on the 1-day average downlink capacity based on the visibility analysis between ground stations and KPLO, and described its results.

• International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences
• /
• v.17 no.2
• /
• pp.240-252
• /
• 2016

In this paper, an on-board orbit propagator and compressing trajectory method based on B-spline for a lunar explorer are proposed. An explorer should recognize its own orbit for a successful mission operation. Generally, orbit determination is periodically performed at the ground station, and the computed orbit information is subsequently uploaded to the explorer, which would generate a heavy workload for the ground station and the explorer. A high-performance computer at the ground station is employed to determine the orbit required for the explorer in the parking orbit of Earth. The method not only reduces the workload of the ground station and the explorer, but also increases the orbital prediction accuracy. Then, the data was compressed into coefficients within a given tolerance using B-spline. The compressed data is then transmitted to the explorer efficiently. The data compression is maximized using the proposed methods. The methods are compared with a fifth order polynomial regression method. The results show that the proposed method has the potential for expansion to various deep space probes.