카이스트 인공위성연구센터의 위성 기술 습득과 개선 과정 고찰 = A Study of the Process of Obtaining and Improving Satellite Technologies at KAIST SaTReC

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This study traces the process of obtaining and improving satellite technologies by the KAIST Satellite Technology Research Center (SaTReC) over a period of ten years from 1989 to 1999. It examines the center’s interactions with the surrounding social and political environments, especially the government’s science and technology policies. What drove KAIST SaTReC to develop the design and manufacturing technologies for the nation’s first satellite when it was only a small-sized university research center? The study takes a two-pronged approach to this question: a microscopic approach involving its strategies and practice of technology acquisition and a macroscopic one involving the government’s science and technology policies and their changes since the latter half of the 1980s.
The study first focuses on the technological details of SaTReC’s obtaining the technologies to design, build, and operate a satellite in terms of its strategies and methods. I emphasize three aspects of the process; 1) the characteristic of UoSAT; 2) the strategies of technology study and development with the manufacture of KAIST's own satellite in mind; and 3) the interactions of technology transfer.
The study also examines the social and political environments surrounding the center's satellite projects of KITSAT 1-3 over a period of ten years. A new regime began in the nation in 1993 when KITSAT 2 was launched. Since then the satellite project was carried out under the leadership of the government with the Korea Aerospace Research Institute appointed to supervise the project of Arirang, a Korea multi-purpose satellite. Those developments caused a crisis to SaTReC and resulted in the postponement of KITSAT 3 development. In 1999, the center went through changes to its status in the midst of a crisis to its survival and had to witness researchers with pivotal roles leave, but it paradoxically led to an opportunity to spread the satellite technologies accumulated in the center around society.