In spite of a short history of only 30 years in space development, Korea has achieved outstanding space development capabilities, and became the 11th member of the “Space Club” in 2013 by launching its own satellites with its own launch vehicle from a local space center. With the successful development and operation of more than 10 earth-orbiting satellites since 1999, Korea is now rapidly expanding its own aspirations to outer space exploration. Unlike earth-orbiting missions, planetary missions are more demanding of well-rounded technological capabilities, specifically trajectory design, analysis, and navigation. Because of the importance of relevant technologies, the Korean astronautical society devoted significant efforts to secure these basic technologies from the early 2000s. This paper revisits the numerous efforts conducted to date, specifically regarding flight dynamics and navigation technology, to prepare for future upcoming planetary missions in Korea. However, sustained efforts are still required to realize such challenging planetary missions, and efforts to date will significantly advance the relevant Korean technological capabilities.
We report on our Galactic plane searches for magnetars in the archival Chandra X-ray Observatory (CXO) data. We summarize the properties of known magnetars and use them to establish a procedure for magnetar searches. The procedure includes four steps: source finding, spectral characterization, optical counterpart checks, and period searches. We searched 1,282 archival CXO observations, found 32,838 X-ray sources, and selected 25 intriguing candidates using the developed procedure. Although we do not firmly identify a magnetar among them, we significantly reduced the number of targets in future magnetar searches to be done with better X-ray telescopes.
The ionosphere has been monitored by ionosondes for over five decades since the 1960s in Korea. An ionosonde typically produces an ionogram that displays radio echoes in the frequency-range plane. The trace of echoes in the plane can be read either manually or automatically to derive useful ionospheric parameters such as foF2 (peak frequency of the F2 layer) and hmF2 (peak height of the F2 layer). Monitoring of the ionosphere should be routinely performed in a given time cadence, and thus, automatic scaling of an ionogram is generally executed to obtain ionospheric parameters. However, an auto-scaling program can generate undesirable results that significantly misrepresent the ionosphere. In order to verify the degree of misrepresentation by an auto-scaling program, we performed manual scaling of all 35,136 ionograms measured at Jeju (33.43˚N, 126.30˚E) throughout 2012. We compared our manually scaled parameters (foF2 and hmF2) with auto-scaled parameters that were obtained via the ARTIST5002 program. We classified five cases in terms of the erroneous scaling performed by the program. The results of the comparison indicate that the average differences with respect to foF2 and hmF2 between the two methods approximately correspond to 0.03 MHz and 4.1 km, respectively with corresponding standard deviations of 0.12 MHz and 9.58 km. Overall, 36 % of the auto-scaled results differ from the manually scaled results by the first decimal number. Therefore, future studies should be aware of the quality of auto-scaled parameters obtained via ARTIST5002. Hence, the results of the study recommend the use of manually scaled parameters (if available) for any serious applications.
Understanding solar influences on extreme weather is important. Insight into the causes of extreme weather events, including the solar-terrestrial connection, would allow better preparation for these events and help minimize the damage caused by disasters that threaten the human population. In this study, we examined category three, four, and five tropical cyclones that occurred in the western North Pacific Ocean from 1977 to 2016. We compared long-term trends in the positions of tropical cyclone occurrence and development with variations of the observed sunspot area, the solar North-South asymmetry, and the southern oscillation index (SOI). We found that tropical cyclones formed, had their maximum intensity, and terminated more northward in latitude and more westward in longitude over the period analyzed; they also became stronger during that period. It was found that tropical cyclones cannot be correlated or anti-correlated with the solar cycle. No evidence showing that properties (including positions of occurrence/development and other characteristics) of tropical cyclones are modulated by solar activity was found, at least not in terms of a spectral analysis using the wavelet transform method.
This paper presents relative navigation using intermittent laser-based measurement data for spacecraft flying formation that consist of two spacecrafts; namely, chief and deputy spacecrafts. The measurement data consists of the relative distance measured by a femtosecond laser, and the relative angles between the two spacecrafts. The filtering algorithms used for the relative navigation are the extended Kalman filter (EKF), unscented Kalman filter (UKF), and least squares recursive filter (LSRF). Numerical simulations reveal that the relative navigation performances of the EKF- and UKF-based relative navigation algorithms decrease in accuracy as the measurement outage period increases. However, the relative navigation performance of the UKF-based algorithm is 95 % more accurate than that of the EKF-based algorithm when the measurement outage period is 80 sec. Although the relative navigation performance of the LSRF-based relative navigation algorithm is 94 % and 370 % less accurate than those of the EKF- and UKF-based navigation algorithms, respectively, when the measurement outage period is 5 sec; the navigation error varies within a range of 4 %, even though the measurement outage period is increased. The results of this study can be applied to the design of a relative navigation strategy using the developed algorithms with laser-based measurements for spacecraft formation flying.
Many recent satellites have mission periods longer than 10 years; thus, satellite-based local space weather monitoring is becoming more important than ever. This article describes the instruments and data applications of the Korea Space wEather Monitor (KSEM), which is a space weather payload of the GeoKompsat-2A (GK-2A) geostationary satellite. The KSEM payload consists of energetic particle detectors, magnetometers, and a satellite charging monitor. KSEM will provide accurate measurements of the energetic particle flux and three-axis magnetic field, which are the most essential elements of space weather events, and use sensors and external data such as GOES and DSCOVR to provide five essential space weather products. The longitude of GK-2A is 128.2° E, while those of the GOES satellite series are 75° W and 135° W. Multi-satellite measurements of a wide distribution of geostationary equatorial orbits by KSEM/GK-2A and other satellites will enable the development, improvement, and verification of new space weather forecasting models. KSEM employs a service-oriented magnetometer designed by ESA to reduce magnetic noise from the satellite in real time with a very short boom (1 m), which demonstrates that a satellite-based magnetometer can be made simpler and more convenient without losing any performance.
Jang Bogo Station (JBS), the second Korean Antarctic research station, was established in Terra Nova Bay, Antarctica (74.62°S 164.22°E) in February 2014 in order to expand the Korea Polar Research Institute (KOPRI) research capabilities. One of the main research areas at JBS is space environmental research. The goal of the research is to better understand the general characteristics of the polar region ionosphere and thermosphere and their responses to solar wind and the magnetosphere. Ground-based observations at JBS for upper atmospheric wind and temperature measurements using the Fabry-Perot Interferometer (FPI) began in March 2014. Ionospheric radar (VIPIR) measurements have been collected since 2015 to monitor the state of the polar ionosphere for electron density height profiles, horizontal density gradients, and ion drifts. To investigate the magnetosphere and geomagnetic field variations, a search-coil magnetometer and vector magnetometer were installed in 2017 and 2018, respectively. Since JBS is positioned in an ideal location for auroral observations, we installed an auroral all-sky imager with a color sensor in January 2018 to study substorms as well as auroras. In addition to these observations, we are also operating a proton auroral imager, airglow imager, global positioning system total electron content (GPS TEC)/scintillation monitor, and neutron monitor in collaboration with other institutes. In this article, we briefly introduce the observational activities performed at JBS and the preliminary results of these observations.
The present paper describes the design of a Solid State Telescope (SST) on board the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute satellite-1 (KASISat-1) consisting of four [TBD] nanosatellites. The SST will measure these radiation belt electrons from a low-Earth polar orbit satellite to study mechanisms related to the spatial resolution of electron precipitation, such as electron microbursts, and those related to the measurement of energy dispersion with a high temporal resolution in the sub-auroral regions. We performed a simulation to determine the sensor design of the SST using GEometry ANd Tracking 4 (GEANT4) simulations and the Bethe formula. The simulation was performed in the range of 100 ~ 400 keV considering that the electron, which is to be detected in the space environment. The SST is based on a silicon barrier detector and consists of two telescopes mounted on a satellite to observe the electrons moving along the geomagnetic field (pitch angle 0°) and the quasi-trapped electrons (pitch angle 90°) during observations. We determined the telescope design of the SST in view of previous measurements and the geometrical factor in the cylindrical geometry of Sullivan (1971). With a high spectral resolution of 16 channels over the 100 keV ~ 400 keV energy range, together with the pitch angle information, the designed SST will answer questions regarding the occurrence of microbursts and the interaction with energetic particles. The KASISat-1 is expected to be launched in the latter half of 2020.
The characterization of detectors installed in space- and ground-based instruments is important to evaluate the system performance. We report the development of a detector performance test system for astronomical applications using the Andor iKon M CCD camera. The performance test system consists of a light source, monochromator, integrating sphere, and power meters. We adopted the Czerny–Tuner monochromator with three ruled gratings and one mirror, which covers a spectral range of 200–9,000 nm with a spectral resolution of ~1 nm in the visible region. Various detector characteristics, such as the quantum efficiency, sensitivity, and noise, can be measured in wide wavelength ranges from the visible to mid-infrared regions. We evaluated the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI) detector performance test system by using the performance verification of the Andor iKon-M CCD camera. The test procedure includes measurements of the conversion gain (2.86 e−/ADU), full well capacity (130 K e−), nonlinearity, and pixel defects. We also estimated the read noise, dark current, and quantum efficiency as a function of the temperature. The lowest measured read noise is 12 e−. The dark current at 223 K was determined to be 7 e−/s/pix and its doubling temperature is 5.3°C ± 0.2°C at an activation energy of 0.6 eV. The maximum quantum efficiency at 223 K was estimated to be 93 % ± 2 %. We proved that the quantum efficiency is sensitive to the operating temperature. It varies up to 5 % in the visible region, while the variation increases to 30 % in the near-infrared region. Based on the comparison of our results with the test report by the vendor, we conclude that our performance test results are consistent with those from the vendor considering the test environment. We also confirmed that the KASI detector performance test system is reliable and our measurement method and analysis are accurate.