■The Korea AeroSpace Administration said it will host a special public lecture on Oct. 22 at Paradise Hotel Busan, inviting Bradford Parkinson, an eminent scholar in satellite navigation and professor emeritus at Stanford University. The lecture will look back on the innovative development of GPS technology and share with the public the latest technological trends and the future direction of PNT (positioning, navigation and timing) systems. Applications can be submitted by the 20th via Naver Form (https://naver.me/5FEIKC5p) or the QR code on the event poster.
■The Korea Polar Research Institute (KOPRI) said on the 16th it held a launch ceremony for the overwintering research teams for the Antarctic science stations at its headquarters in Yeonsu-gu, Incheon. The overwintering teams are responsible for research and station operations while residing in Antarctica for about one year; this year, the 39th overwintering team will be dispatched to King Sejong Station and the 13th overwintering team to Jang Bogo Station. The teams have completed training and orientation for station life; the Jang Bogo team will depart in two groups on Nov. 2 and 7, and the King Sejong team will depart on Nov. 26.
■The Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) said on the 21st it will host "Open Source Tech Day 2025" at the aT Center in Yangjae, Seoul, under the theme "Sharing knowledge and the start of AI innovation, open source." Marking its sixth year, the event is co-hosted by the Ministry of Science and ICT and the National Research Council of Science & Technology (NST), and jointly organized by eight government-funded research institutes including ETRI. The event consists of five sessions: a keynote, open-source policies and trends, developers and communities, open-source research and development (R&D), and open-source compliance.
■Sponsored by the Korea AeroSpace Administration and organized by the Young Astronauts Korea, the country's largest youth aerospace festival, the 23rd National Aerospace Science Competition, will be held on the 18th at Kumoh National Institute of Technology in Gumi, North Gyeongsang. More than about 6,000 elementary, middle and high school students across the country took part in the preliminaries, competing fiercely by region, and about 700 students will compete on the finals stage. In line with the era of the great transition to artificial intelligence (AI), a new category for AI-based aerospace game scenario development has been added, bringing the total to six categories: model (propellant) rockets, water rockets, electric airplanes, rubber-powered planes, and coding drones.
■The National Science Museum said on the 17th that to mark its 80th anniversary, it will hold "Science Brick Party: Play! Build! Learn!" from the 18th to the 19th at the Korea History of Science and Technology Hall (2nd floor of the Science and Technology Hall). Works by professional artists who recreated Korea's representative traditional science and technology with bricks will be on display, and visitors can meet the brick artists in person. On the 18th, there will be a special program to see the actual "Rumi's Four Gods Sword" that appeared in a popular animation and experience the traditional constellations depicted in the sword. For details, visit the National Science Museum website (www.science.go.kr).
■The First International Hard X-ray Self-Seeding Workshop, jointly organized by the Pohang Accelerator Laboratory and major accelerator research institutions in Germany, Switzerland, the United States, Japan and China, was held from the 15th to the 17th. It consisted of four sessions on the performance and operational status of major overseas facilities, the status of new technology development, application fields, and future visions, and in-depth opinion exchange took place through panel discussions in each session. In the application session, possibilities were presented for advanced experiments that had been difficult, such as nonlinear spectroscopy using high-energy X-rays, nuclear spectroscopy, and studies on the dynamics of gaseous, liquid and amorphous samples.
■The Ministry of Science and ICT said on the 17th it visited the Korea Basic Science Institute (KBSI) and held an on-site meeting to discuss the construction and operation status of the multipurpose synchrotron and ways to improve effective management systems. Attendees focused on strengthening safety management, ensuring timely progress in facility and equipment construction, and strategies to expand research utilization. Lee Ju-han, secretary to the president for science and technology research, said, "Please do your utmost in project management so that the somewhat delayed Ochang synchrotron construction project can get on track, and also ensure that enhanced safety measures take root on site."