Seminar: Preliminary Power, PNT, and Communication Infrastructure Development Options for Commercial Lunar South-pole Exploration - Feb. 28
Tae Kim
Consulting Engineer Systems, Northrop Grumman/Mission SystemsÌý
Friday, Feb. 28 | 10:40 a.m. | AERO 114
Abstract: The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) 10-Year Lunar Architecture (LunA-10) announcement (DARPA, 2023) envisions a thriving lunar economy that necessitates rapid scaling of lunar exploration and commerce activities within the next decade. This rapid scaling, facilitated by the deployment of modular lunar infrastructure subsystems, can bring about a paradigm shift in cislunar space exploration. Among these subsystems, power, position navigation timing (PNT), and communication systems are identified as critical infrastructures for early human and machine lunar surface exploration.Ìý
This paper presents a pivotal NGC trade study for modular power, low to medium data rate, and low size, weight, and power (SWaP) mobile joint communications-PNT (Comms-PNT) and Lunar Search and Rescue (LunarSAR) subsystem options, and preliminary performance bounds. These early critical lunar terrestrial Power, Comms-PNT, and LunarSAR network subsystems and their key subcomponents are envisioned to begin covering the South Pole region. The terrestrial Comms-PNT modular subsystems are not just designed to be expandable but also to be adaptable, ensuring that they can evolve to meet the changing PNT and geo-referencing control segment assets per National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Lunar Communications Relay and Navigation Systems services requirements document (LCRNS SRD) (NASA 2022a & 2022b) to support future LunaNet specification (NASA 2023) for cislunar spacecraft and installations.
Bio: Dr. Taehwan Kim has over 30 years of experience in Space PNT and Communications systems with NASA GSFC, MITRE Corporation, and Industry. He contributed to the GPS L5 waveform and spectrum engineering to coexist with L-band emitters to receive the MITRE president award and the RTCA certification of appreciation. His current R&D areas include high-Doppler LEO, hypersonic, Cislunar PNT-communication, SWARM autonomy, and fusion integrity. He received a Ph.D.EE from the University of Maryland and BS in mathematics from the Seoul National University.