Irene Klotz is Senior Space Editor for Aviation Week, based in Cape Canaveral. Before joining Aviation Week in 2017, Irene spent 25 years as a wire service reporter covering human and robotic spaceflight, commercial space, astronomy, science and technology for Reuters and United Press International. She also worked with Discovery Communications, Discovery News and was a founding member of Space.com.
Irene cut her teeth on the space beat at Florida Today newspaper, a business writer enchanted by the colorful entrepreneurs who wanted access to Air Force launch facilities and assets after commercial payloads were taken off the space shuttles following the 1986 Challenger accident. Commercial space remains the focus of her work, along with a keen interest in the search for life beyond Earth.
A graduate of Northwestern University, Irene is the 2014 recipient of the Harry Kolcum Memorial News and Communications Award, named in honor of the late Aviation Week managing editor and Cape Canaveral senior editor who was among Irene’s earliest mentors.
The two-hour launch window on Nov. 16 closes at 3:04 a.m. The mission marks the first flight of the SLS, which has been in development for more than a decade.
NASA managers have cleared the Kennedy Space Center launch team to start the two-day countdown for launch, but two technical issues that surfaced during post-hurricane inspections and tests still need to be resolved.
CAPE CANAVERAL—Post-hurricane inspections and analysis of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion capsule, which rode out a Category 1 storm at the launchpad, show no impediments toward picking up the two-day countdown for launch as planned on Nov. 14, NASA Associate Administrator Jim Free said on Nov. 11.
