NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Dr. Chivey Wu, Dr. Helen Boussalis, Dr. Darrell Guillaume, Dr. Trinh K. Pham and SPACE Center students at the SPACE Laboratory. › View Larger Image The Structures, Propulsion, and Control Engineering
Award Period: August 2009 – September 2013

Center

The Structures, Propulsion, and Control Engineering (SPACE) University Research Center (URC) was established in 2003 at the California State University, Los Angeles (CSULA) with NASA funding of $6 million. The Center received another NASA award of $5 million to continue research from years 2009 to 2013. The URC is composed of two laboratories—the Structures Pointing and Control Engineering (SPACE) laboratory and the Multidisciplinary Flight Dynamics and Control (MFDC) laboratory.

The SPACE University Research Center (URC) works in partnership with Dryden Flight Research Center (DFRC) as the lead NASA center, and JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) as the secondary NASA center. In addition, the URC has a close collaboration with Boeing Company and Northrop Grumman Corporation. The major areas of research in the URC are directly related to the missions of the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate (Uninhabited Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), and Combustion) and Human Exploration Operations Mission Directorate (James Webb Space Telescope), addressing and supporting some of key challenges of these missions.

To address the technology challenges of both Directorates, the SPACE center conducts research and development in the following Research Areas:

• Intelligent Flight Control, Autonomous Control, Formation Flying
• Uninhabited Air Vehicles (UAV) Development
• Wind-Tunnel Testing and Validations
• Optimization of Combustion and Propulsion Systems
• Bio-derived Liquid Fuel and Solid Propellant Development
• Thermal Analysis of Space Systems
• Space Telescope Technology, Precision Pointing, System Identification
• Decentralized Control, Failure Analysis and Reconfigurable Control
• Ubiquitous Computing and Embedded Architectures

The URC shares NASA's commitment to increasing the number of minority students who will pursue and earn advanced degrees to become the influential scientists and engineers of tomorrow.

Principal Investigator: Dr. Helen Ryaciotaki-Boussalis
Professor, Electrical Engineering Department
Director, NASA University Research Center (SPACE)

California State University, Los Angeles
5151 State University Drive
Los Angeles, CA 90032
Tel: (323) 343-4549, E-mail: hboussa@calstatela.edu