found: Baltimore sun WWW site, viewed Oct. 26, 2017(in obituary dated Oct. 25, 2017: Dr. Yoji Kondo, a retired astrophysicist and science-fiction writer who wrote a Star Trek novel, died Oct. 9 in Columbia; he was 84; born in Hitachi, Japan; studied physics at the City College of New York and then applied for a doctoral program in astronomy; earned a doctorate at Univ. of Pennsylvania in 1961; received a National Academy of Sciences postdoctoral fellowship and did research for three years at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center; he and his family then lived in Greenbelt; in 1968, Dr. Kondo and his family moved to Nassau Bay, Texas, where Dr. Kondo was the head of the astrophysics lab at the Johnson Space Center for the Apollo and Skylab missions; he was director of the geosynchronous satellite observatory for 15 years; moved to Columbia in 1978 when he was named NASA project scientist for the International Ultraviolet Explorer and later the Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer; had a second career as a science-fiction writer; Dr. Kondo, who wrote under the name Eric Kotani, collaborated with John Maddox Roberts on a series of popular books, including "Island Worlds," "Delta Pavonis" and "Legacy of Prometheus"; also wrote his own novel, "Death of a Neutron Star," which was published by Simon & Schuster as No. 17 in its Star Trek series; over the years, he also taught at the University of Houston, the University of Pennsylvania, George Mason University, the Institute of Space & Astronautical Research in Japan, University of La Plata in Argentina and Catholic University of America)
