Jeff has been involved in aerospace journalism since the mid 1990s. Prior to joining Aviation Week, Jeff served as managing editor of Launchspace magazine and the International Space Industry Report. He has been the editor and chief of Aviation Week's Aerospace Daily & Defense Report since 2007 and has been a regular contributor to Aviation Week magazine. He received his B.A. from the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va.
EQUATORIAL SHOTS: Sea Launch and Intelsat have signed an umbrella launch contract covering five missions from Sea Launch’s mobile equatorial launch platform that will be conducted from late 2010 through 2012. Sea Launch has performed eight successful missions for Intelsat, including Galaxy 18 and Galaxy 19 this year.
NASA conducted a roughly four-second ground firing of the Launch Abort System (LAS) motor for the Orion spacecraft at Alliant Techsystems’ (ATK) facility in Promontory, Utah, on Nov. 20, marking the first test of its kind since the Apollo era and clearing the way for the first integrated pad abort flight-test this coming spring at White Sands Missile Range, N.M.
SPACE NET: Engineers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory have transmitted dozens of space images to and from the Epoxi spacecraft, marking what the agency calls the first step in creating “an interplanetary Internet.” The team used software called Disruption-Tolerant Networking (DTN), which sends information using a method that differs from the normal Internet’s TCP/IP. Engineers began a series of DTN demonstrations in October.
