The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport is launching the Korea Augmentation Satellite System (KASS), an aeronautical satellite service that provides precise location signals across the entire country.

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport announced that it will begin operating the Aeronautical Satellite Service (KASS) in earnest on Thursday, December 28th of last year, becoming the fifth country in the world to do so, in line with the international trend of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) standardizing the Satellite Based Augmentation System (SBAS) as an aeronautical satellite navigation system and aiming for its global expansion.

KASS stands for the Korean Satellite Navigation Correction System, which provides precise and reliable location information to international standards by correcting the location error (15-33 m) that occurs when using GPS signals to the level of 1-1.6 m.

The Korea Aerospace Research and Development Institute (KASS) construction project was carried out over nine years with a large budget (approximately KRW 128 billion) starting in 2014, and the first aeronautical satellite was successfully launched in 2022. Afterwards, it successfully completed final performance verification through ground-satellite integration tests.

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport plans to establish landing procedures at Muan International Airport and Ulsan Airport and launch the first airport service in January 2024, and gradually expand the service by considering service stability and airport environment.

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said, “We expect that flight delays and cancellations will decrease, air traffic capacity will increase by providing optimal routes, and fuel and carbon emissions will decrease.”

Meanwhile, the Korea Aerospace Research Institute and the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) completed the performance compliance certification in cooperation to certify whether the KASS system complies with the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) performance standards, and the certificate award ceremony was held on Thursday, December 28.

Kyung-soo Yoo, director general of Aviation Safety Policy at the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, emphasized that “the Aeronautical Satellite Service (KASS) is very significant in terms of securing advanced domestic navigation assets using satellites,” and added, “I hope that it will make people’s lives more convenient by being applied to various location information service industries such as smartphones, urban air traffic (UAM), and autonomous driving, along with aviation services. I also hope that this will be an opportunity for us to leap forward as a powerhouse in the location information industry using satellites in the future.”