Sang-il Ahn

Ground Contact Analysis for Korea`s Fictitious Lunar Orbiter Mission

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.

Analysis on Tracking Schedule and Measurements Characteristics for the Spacecraft on the Phase of Lunar Transfer and Capture

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Analysis of X-Band Link Performance Degradation Caused by Adjacent Satellite

Satellite Operation Division, Korea Aerospace Research Institute, Daejeon 305-333, KoreaAs more satellites are designed to downlink their observed image data through the X-band frequency band, it is inevitable that the occupied bandwidth of a target satellite will overlap with that of other X-band downlink satellites. For sun-syn-chronized low earth orbit satellites, in particular, it can be expected that two or more satellites be placed within the look -ing angle of a ground station antenna at the same time. Due to the overlapping in the frequency band, signals transmitted from the adjacent satellites act as interferers, leading to degraded link performance between target satellite and ground station. In this paper, link analysis was initiated by modeling the radiation pattern of ground station antenna through a validated Jet Propulsion Laboratory peak envelope model. From the relative antenna gain depending on the offset angle from center axis of maximum antenna directivity, the ratio of received interference signal level to the target signal level was calculated. As a result, it was found that the degradation increased when the offset angle was within the first null point of radiation pattern. For a 7.3 m antenna, serious link degradation began at an offset angle of 0.4 degrees. From this analysis, the link performance of the coming satellite passes can be recognized, which is helpful to establish an operat-ing procedure that will prevent the ground station from receiving corrupted image data in the event of a degraded link.

A qos-based adaptive resource sharing protection for optical burst switching networks

Protection and restoration are essential mechanisms for guaranteeing more reliable traffic delivery services But it is not easy to apply existing mechanisms to optical burst switching (OBS) networks due to its one-way reservation signaling and the statistical burst multiplexing Thus, to achieve the high transmission performance and reliability simultaneously, unique properties of OBS must be considered in the design of protection scheme In this paper, we introduce a new 1:1 link-based OBS protection with several control messages It minimizes burst losses by deflecting bursts until the source edge router arbitrates a working burst path to a backup path when a link failure occurs Based on this, we propose a genuine dynamic resource sharing (DRS) protection algorithm It optimizes the number of provisioned protection wavelengths adaptively based on the traffic load as well as the quality of service (QoS) requirements of bursts in near real-time In addition, DRS can be used as the temporary short-term contention resolution method The simulation results verify that the proposed schemes improve the network resource sharing and backup links channel utilization while guaranteeing the targeted protection reliability and QoS requirements of class bursts.

Performance Enhancement of a Satellite’s Onboard Antenna Tracking Profile using the Ground Station Searching Method

In satellite operations, stable maneuvering of a satellite’s onboard antenna to prevent undesirable vibrations to the satellite body is required for high-quality high-resolution images. For this reason, the onboard antenna’s angular rate is typically minimized while still satisfying the system requirement that limits the speed of the onboard antenna. In this study, a simple yet effective method, called the ground station searching method, is proposed to reduce the angular rate of a satellite’s onboard antenna. The performance of the proposed method is tested using real flight data from the KOMPSAT-3 satellite. Approximately 83% of arbitrarily selected real flight scenarios from 66 test cases show reductions in the onboard antenna’s azimuth angular rates. Additionally, reliable solutions were consistently obtained within a reasonably acceptable computation time while generating an onboard antenna tracking profile. The obtained results indicate that the proposed method can be used in real satellite operations and can reduce the operational loads on a ground operator. Although the current work only considers the KOMPSAT-3 satellite as a test case, the proposed method can be easily modified and applied to other satellites that have similar operational characteristics.

Preliminary Study on Interplanetary Trajectory Design using Invariant Manifolds of the Circular Restricted Three Body Problem

This paper represents a trajectory design and analysis technique which uses invariant manifolds of the circular restricted three body problem. Instead of the classical patched conic method based on 2-body problem, the equation of motion and dynamical behavior of spacecraft in the circular restricted 3-body problem are introduced, and the characteristics of Lyapunov orbits near libration points and their invariant manifolds are covered in this paper. The trajectories from/to Lyapunov orbits are numerically generated with invariant manifolds in the Earth-moon system. The trajectories in the Sun-Jupiter system are also analyzed with various initial conditions in the boundary surface. These methods can be effectively applied to interplanetary trajectory designs.

Development Strategy of Orbit Determination System for Korea`s Lunar Mission: Lessons from ESA, JAXA, ISRO and CNSA`s Experiences

In this paper, a brief but essential development strategy for the lunar orbit determination system is discussed to prepare for the future Korea`s lunar missions. Prior to the discussion of this preliminary development strategy, technical models of foreign agencies for the lunar orbit determination system, tracking networks to measure the orbit, and collaborative efforts to verify system performance are reviewed in detail with a short summary of their lunar mission history. Covered foreign agencies are European Space Agency, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Indian Space Research Organization and China National Space Administration. Based on the lessons from their experiences, the preliminary development strategy for Korea`s future lunar orbit determination system is discussed with regard to the core technical issues of dynamic modeling, numerical integration, measurement modeling, estimation method, measurement system as well as appropriate data formatting for the interoperability among foreign agencies. Although only the preliminary development strategy has been discussed through this work, the proposed strategy will aid the Korean astronautical society while on the development phase of the future Korea`s own lunar orbit determination system. Also, it is expected that further detailed system requirements or technical development strategies could be designed or established based on the current discussions.

Development of COMS DATS C&M S/W

COMS DATS C&M software is an integrated management system providing control and monitoring functionalities for COMS IDACS (Image Data Acquisition and Control System). DATS C&M S/W consists of a system management module, a control and monitoring module, a data management module, and a trend analysis module. COMS SOC is supposed to operate IDACS as a backup of MSC. Especially, for the backup operation, the control and monitoring module of DATS C&M S/W is designed to support the synchronization of the two IDACS systems. This paper describes design, implementation, and result of development of DATS C&M S/W.

COMS DATS Implementation and Test

DATS which is one of three subsystems of IDACS is responsible to receive Sensor Data, LRIT and HRIT in L-Band and transmit LRIT and HRIT in S-Band from/to COMS satellite. This paper shows detailed test procedures used to verify the performance and functionality of DATS after its implementation was completely finished. As a part of efforts to verify key DATS performance, G/T and EIRP were measured by using solar flux density as radio source. Regarding the verification of DATS functionality, RF loop-back test was conducted to validate if there is no BER degradation excepting MODEM/BB implementation loss occurred in the integrated DATS. Integrated with 13m antenna, DATS successfully restored image from received MTSAT-1R broadcasting data, LRIT and HRIT, of which frequencies are all L-Band. S-Band transmission was also verified through test antenna placed away from 13m antenna by measuring real LRIT and HRIT spectrum in S-Band. From those test results, DATS is determined to be fully ready to communicate with COMS in L-Band and S-Band.

Integeation Test of Coms Image Data Acquisition and Control System

COMS Image Data Acquisition and Control System (IDACS) plays a key role in real time ground processing of Meteorological and Ocean observation data. Beyond processing, it serves processed image data and additional data to end users through the spacecraft in the internationally recommended format. The IDACS will be installed at three location (MSC, KOSC, and SOC) and automatically operated 24h/365days. After the IDACS subsystem tests and inter -subsystem interface tests had been completed in the first half of 2008, the acceptance test which was a comprehensive test performed as an integrated form to verify function performance and operational requirements. This paper introduces test objective, preparation, and major result of the COMS IDACS acceptance test.