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.
The STS-120 astronaut crew led by U.S. Air Force Col. (ret.) Pam Melroy will be at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) this week for launch pad safety training and a countdown dress rehearsal Oct. 10 with the crew inside shuttle Discovery on Pad 39A. Launch Control Center technicians will count down the unfueled vehicle as planned for its launch at 11:38 a.m. EDT Oct. 23. The simulation will end with a practice pad abort, when the crew must exit the vehicle quickly and prepare to descend from the top of the massive launch pad in slide wire baskets.
NASA’s Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle finally is nearing its weight target, says NASA project manager Skip Hatfield. Going into its most recent round of redesigns, the Lockheed Martin-built spacecraft was still about 5,000 lb. over its target weight (AW&ST May 21, p. 43). Removing a layer of redundancy from the vehicle’s systems has produced a stripped-down “zero-base” Orion design, to which the team is now judiciously adding systems back.
Leave it to the Japanese to bring us the classic blue Earth image from space in high-definition television (HDTV). That’s what the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has done in this view showing the west coast of South America illuminated by sunlight. The image was taken Sept. 29 by JAXA’s Selene lunar probe from a distance of 68,000 mi. from Earth as the spacecraft was performing an instrument check-out following its Sept. 14 launch. JAXA put Selene into a two-orbit pass around Earth to gain a gravity assist for the voyage to the moon.
