Korea Advancing Space Activities Toward Participation In Global Lunar, Space Exploration

South Korea is developing key technologies to become a significant partner in future international space projects, including the Global Exploration Strategy, the International Lunar Network and the International Space Exploration Coordination Group. The nation's space agency, the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI), is currently focused on the maiden launch of its KSLV-1 rocket (BR), expected in early 2009 from its new spaceport in Goheung, South Joella Province. A successful launch would make South Korea the 9th country to send a satellite into orbit from its own soil. It currently has a dozen satellites in space, all launched by foreign partners. The KSLV is being developed in cooperation with Russia, which also facilitated South Korea's 1st astronaut, Yi So-Yeon (BL), who traveled to the ISS aboard a Russia Soyuz spacecraft in Apr 2008. Munki Lee, assistant administrator at the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, signed a joint statement with NASA official Michael O'Brien in Seoul, Korea in Oct 2008 to identify new areas of cooperation in the fields of Earth and planetary sciences, human spaceflight and space exploration. The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) is currently developing a robotic lunar lander (TL) with the goal of landing it on the Moon by 2013, and South Korea intends to have a citizen on the lunar surface by 2020. (Credit: KARI, KAIST)

The Lorentz Center is hosting the '1st Science with LOFAR Surveys' workshop Dec 10-12 in Leiden, the Netherlands. LOFAR (LOw Frequency ARray) started as an innovative effort to reach a breakthrough in sensitivity for radio astronomy in frequencies below 250MHz. The technology utilizes simple omni-directional antennas instead of mechanical signal processing with a dish antenna. Data received by the antennas is digitized, sent to a central digital processor and combined in software to emulate a conventional antenna. To make radio pictures of adequate sharpness, about 25,000 antennas will be spread out over a 1,000-km-diameter area in the Netherlands, Germany and other European nations (pictured - bottom). The first phase currently contains 6,000 antennas in about 36 stations in the Netherlands and 5 stations in Germany. One station has been operational since 2006, 20 more are getting started this year, and the rest will begin in 2009. The processing of the data is done by a Blue Gene / P supercomputer situated at the University of Groningen, Netherlands. This week's conference will review the 4 topics that are driving the proposed low frequency sky survey with LOFAR. These topics include: studying the formation of massive galaxies, clusters and black holes; intercluster magnetic fields; star formation processes in the early Universe; and exploration of new parameter space for serendipitous discovery. (Credit: Astron)