From the Director of ISSO
David Criswell

THE INSTITUTE FOR SPACE SYSTEMS OPERATIONS (ISSO) of the University of Houston and the University of Houston Clear Lake is the operating agency for the State Special line item, the Houston Partnership for Space Exploration. Two primary purposes of HPSE/ISSO have been defined:

• Increase the research and educational capabilities of UH/UHCL faculty, colleges, and institutions across the many disciplines of the aerospace industry.
• Establish and expand links between UH/UHCL and other universities, colleges, and companies, and Texas agencies within the Texas Space Grant Consortium (TSGC) so that all of Texas will benefit from state funds directed to HPSE.

ISSO currently supports two major levels of programming:

• Jointly-supported research such as the established UH/UHCL-JSC Post-Doctoral Aerospace Fellows Program and
• Seed funding research by UH/UHCL faculty to enable competitive proposals for external funding.

In 1995, ISSO initiated, in cooperation with the NASA-Johnson Space Center, a unique new Post-Doctoral Aerospace Fellowship Program. Under this program, university faculty members and JSC scientists and engineers formed teams to pursue research, development, and projects in operations that would serve three primary purposes:

• Advance the ability of NASA-JSC to explore and exploit space to the advancement of humankind.
• Conduct scientific, engineering, and other research significant at the post-doctoral level.
• Emphasize projects with commercial potential.

Forty team projects were proposed to ISSO. Sixteen projects were selected by a university-JSC peer review. Announcements in professional journals and on the Internet stimulated 150 applications for the new fellowship projects. Between May 1996, and January 1997, 15 post-doctoral fellows were selected and began work at NASA-JSC, UH, and UHCL. Research is conducted by teams primarily at JSC.

The fellows work at UH and UHCL with the academic team leader. On campus, they teach a limited number of aerospace-related courses, lead seminars, and publish and present research papers and reports. They also participate in developing proposals, mentoring graduate and undergraduate students, and generally enhancing the intellectual depth and breadth of their universities.

As of August 1998, eight have completed their two-year fellowships, and seven are entering their third and final year. Those graduating from the program have gone on to the R&D division of a major Houston-area oil exploration firm, a genetics company in England, M. D. Anderson-Smithville, the California Institute of Technology, and professorial appointments at universities.

Support of the first group of fellows was supplied jointly by ISSO, five colleges of the University of Houston-Cullen College of Engineering, Conrad N. Hilton School of Hotel and Restaurant Management, Natural Sciences and Mathematics, Optometry, and Pharmacy at UH and the College of Natural and Applied Sciences at UHCL. Funding sources included the Energy Laboratory and the Texas Center for Superconductivity at UH (TCSUH). NASA-JSC provided facilities, research staff, and NASA programs to support the research efforts at JSC.

Advantages of JSC Involvement
This 1997-98 ISSO report, along with the 1996-97 and 1995-96 reports, details the research to date, accomplishments, plans for extending existing projects, and new fellowship projects and programs. The joint JSC-university program enables the fellows and their teams to access facilities and national programs that are available only through the Johnson Space Center. These unique fields of investigation include:

• Human and cellular studies related to visual adaptation to normal and zero gravity, decompression sickness, space radiation, and the kinematics of human motion in zero gravity.
• Engineering studies utilizing data and components from the Space Transportation System relevant to estimating reliability of complex systems, databases for numerical simulation of hypersonic flows, health monitoring of shuttle structure and systems, and evolution of proven control system software to newer computer languages.
• Working with the Crew Systems and the Closed Environmental Life Support Systems Branches to better utilize and control the life support systems, use of DNA probes to monitor the bacteriological content of fluids (air, water, waste, etc.), design better food services and processing methods for long-duration flights, and new means of chemically processing the nitrogen oxides in waste streams.
• Extending the understanding of fluid flow in normal and microgravity conditions, applying the technology of high temperature superconductors to vibration isolation and space-lunar telescopes, and conducting experiments in simulated microgravity on-board the JSC KC-135 jet transport.

As detailed in this report, several of the teams are now working with other NASA centers and have won separate research funds from NASA, NSF, and other agencies to extend the work begun with ISSO seed funding and fellowship programs. For the academic years 1996 and 1997, ISSO-funded teams have achieved the following accomplishments:

• 128 papers, 53 presentations, 35 proposals, 26 grants, and one patent application
• Six graduate students, undergraduate students, and three faculty (in addition to primary team members)
• $2,606,000 in leveraged award funds and a leverage factor of 6.2:1

The fellowship program is growing and evolving. ISSO and JSC are preparing for the next solicitation for both project proposals and program-level proposals. The first program-level opportunity may be provided by the Space Operations and Management Office of NASA (SOMO). ISSO has initiated a proposal to co-fund a study with SOMO to apply systems engineering to evaluate a constellation of satellites for the command and control of Mars exploration.

NASA recently established an Astrobiology Program for the scientific study of the origin, distribution and future of life in the Universe. UH is organizing an astrobiology initiative under the auspices of the Institute for Space Systems Operations (ISSO). The immediate goal of this initiative will be to develop a strong focus group for astrobiology in the Houston area and with nearby institutions, e.g. Texas A & M and the University of Texas at Austin.

The effects of radiation on human and other life is of critical importance in long-duration space flight. Teams of physicists at the huge particle accelerator of CERN, in Switzerland, have developed extremely detailed models of the secondary radiation induced in the structures of the particle accelerator beam lines and high energy detectors. ISSO is supporting work by the UH Physics Department and the JSC Space and Life Sciences Directorate to adapt these computer models to predicting the flux of neutrons and other secondary radiation induced in spacecraft and planetary outposts by primary galactic cosmic rays and solar cosmic rays. UH is working with professors at Texas Tech on various aspects of the radiation modeling.

The 15 fellowship projects and three new program-level activities tap but a tiny fraction of the research, development, and advanced operations conducted at NASA-Johnson Space Center. Most of the projects would simply not be possible without teaming with engineers and scientists at JSC, use of the unique facilities and data at JSC, and without access to the national aerospace programs operated by JSC. Educators and researchers at UH/UHCL look forward to the continued cooperation and to opportunities to work with professors at other universities throughout the state of Texas.

Contents
ISSO -- Institute for Space Systems Operations
1997-1998 Annual Report