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.
Rigorous trajectory requirements for a pair of NASA aeronautics experiments probably contributed to a loss of control that forced range-safety destruction of their Alliant Techsystems ALV-X1 launcher last week. Kent Rominger, vice president of advanced programs at ATK, says the “very unique and demanding” trajectory imposed by the Hypersonic Boundary Layer Transition (HyBolt) experiment and the Sub-Orbital Aerodynamic Re-entry Experiment (Soarex) may have overtaxed vehicle control systems on the experimental vehicle.
NASA has released the first image from its latest space observatory, the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (Glast), and given it a new name. Now to be known as the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, after Nobel Prize-winning Italian physicist Enrico Fermi, the telescope will explore high-energy astrophysical phenomena and hopefully provide insights into the origins of cosmic rays and the nature of dark matter.
NASA is seeking ideas from industry about communications and navigation services that could be used by future lunar explorers over the next quarter-century. The request for information (RFI) calls for concepts for terrestrial network services and ground stations, Earth-orbiting satellites, Moon-orbiting satellites and lunar surface capabilities, among other categories.
