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.
Commercial remote sensing provider GeoEye says it has no plans to delay the launch of its upcoming GeoEye-2 imagery satellite, despite recent moves by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) to cut funding support for the company.
NEXT UP: With SpaceX’s first cargo demonstration mission to the International Space Station (ISS) a success so far, NASA is looking ahead to the first flights of its other Commercial Orbital Transportation Services contractor, Orbital Sciences Corp. Orbital’s first demonstration launch of its Antares/Cygnus vehicle — which will not visit the ISS — could occur as early as August, according to NASA ISS Program Manager Mike Suffredini.
Despite directives to the contrary, the U.S. Army and Air Force still have been farming out certain “inherently governmental” tasks to contractors, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). In the services’ own reviews of fiscal 2009 contracting, which GAO auditors call “incomplete” because the Navy failed to participate, there were 1,935 instances in the Army and 91 in the Air Force in which contractors were performing inherently governmental functions, according to GAO.
