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.
ROLLOUT RESCHEDULED: The space shuttle Atlantis is scheduled to roll out to Launch Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at 12:01 a.m. EDT on Tuesday, Sept. 2. Atlantis is targeted to lift off Oct. 8 on an 11-day mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope. Originally targeted for as early as Aug. 30, rollout was delayed to allow time to resolve issues with umbilical mating equipment used on the shuttle’s external tank (Aerospace DAILY, Aug. 27).
PLANNING PURPOSES: 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) seeks ideas about terrestrial network services and ground stations, Earth-orbiting satellites, lunar orbiting satellites, and lunar surface capabilities, among other categories.
NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity is making its way back up after spending nearly a year inside Victoria Crater studying exposed layers of ancient martian rock. The rover entered the 800-meter (2,624-foot) wide crater on Sept. 11, 2007, after a year of scouting from its rim. “We’ve done everything we entered Victoria Crater to do and more,” says Bruce Banerdt, project scientist for Opportunity and its twin rover, Spirit, at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif.
