CAS500-3/Republic Of Korea Imaging Test System and Its Science Applications

This paper introduces the Republic Of Korea Imaging Test System (ROKITS) onboard the Compact Advanced Satellite 500-3 and outlines its science objectives. ROKITS is an imaging camera designed to observe Earth's auroras and airglow in the visible wavelength range. With a 90° field of view, it can capture auroral structures, which are most prominent in the polar regions, with an image swath of approximately 700 km. The primary science objective of ROKITS is to identify the auroral oval boundary from auroral images. A secondary objective is to demonstrate the capability of extracting atmospheric waves and ionospheric disturbances from airglow emissions at wavelength of 557.7 nm and 630.0 nm. To this end, we analyze observational data from Enhanced Polar Outflow Probe/Fast Auroral Imager (e-POP/FAI) onboard the CAScade, Smallsat and Ionospheric Polar Explorer (CASSIOPE) satellite, Special Sensor Ultraviolet Spectrograph Imager (SSUSI) onboard the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) satellite, Ionosphere, Mesosphere, Upper Atmosphere And Plasmasphere/Visible And Near-Infrared Spectral Imager (IMAP/VISI) and Atmospheric Waves Experiment (AWE) aboard the International Space Station. The analysis focuses on the ionospheric and upper atmospheric phenomena that ROKITS aims to observe and assesses the potential applications of ROKITS data. Based on these results, we anticipate ROKITS will enhance our understanding of the ionosphere and upper atmosphere and provide valuable data set for space weather prediction.