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.
Early results of cost analysis by the Augustine human spaceflight panel have found no good options for continuing human exploration of space within the constraints set by the Obama administration’s fiscal 2010 budget plan for NASA. “This budget is simply not friendly to exploration,” panel member and former astronaut Sally Ride said during the group’s final public meeting in Washington Aug. 12. “It’s very difficult to find an exploration scenario that fits within this very restrictive budget guidance that we’ve been given.”
Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope and the Gemini South telescope in Chile to peer nearly 11 billion years into the past have discovered stars in a small, distant galaxy moving at speeds of 1 million miles per hour – roughly twice the speed at which our sun moves through the Milky Way.
DELTA DENOUEMENT: The last U.S. Air Force launch on a Delta II rocket is slated for Aug. 17, when the United Launch Alliance-built rocket will deliver the last of eight modernized Global Positioning System (GPS) IIR-M satellites to orbit. The launch window at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., opens at 6:35 a.m. EDT, and closes 14 minutes later. The mission will mark the second GPS launch of 2009. Built by Lockheed Martin, the IIR-M satellite offers improved position accuracy, enhanced encryption, anti-jamming capabilities and a second civil signal.
