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.
Due to a change in the Defense Department's fiscal 2007 authorizing legislation, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) will not be offering cash prizes to the top performers in its Urban Challenge robotic vehicle competition next year. In 2002, DARPA received prize authority from Congress that extended through the end of FY '06. The first Grand Challenge was held in 2004, although none of the teams performed well enough to claim the $1 million prize. A Stanford University team won the 2005 Grand Challenge purse of $2 million.
NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center plans to fly General Atomics' Altair unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) this month over controlled fires at Yosemite National Park in California to demonstrate how UAVs can assist with fire research and response.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is calling for more oversight of the next-generation Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES-R) program, whose initial cost estimates are close to doubling. Originally budgeted at $6.2 billion, the latest projection for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) weather satellite program is $11.4 billion. This has led NOAA to downscope the effort, cutting one of the five planned GOES-R sensors and potentially dropping the number of satellites to two.
