Irene Klotz is Senior Space Editor for Aviation Week, based in Cape Canaveral. Before joining Aviation Week in 2017, Irene spent 25 years as a wire service reporter covering human and robotic spaceflight, commercial space, astronomy, science and technology for Reuters and United Press International. She also worked with Discovery Communications, Discovery News and was a founding member of Space.com.
Irene cut her teeth on the space beat at Florida Today newspaper, a business writer enchanted by the colorful entrepreneurs who wanted access to Air Force launch facilities and assets after commercial payloads were taken off the space shuttles following the 1986 Challenger accident. Commercial space remains the focus of her work, along with a keen interest in the search for life beyond Earth.
A graduate of Northwestern University, Irene is the 2014 recipient of the Harry Kolcum Memorial News and Communications Award, named in honor of the late Aviation Week managing editor and Cape Canaveral senior editor who was among Irene’s earliest mentors.
ORLANDO, Fla. — NASA is preparing to install Ad Astra Rocket Co.’s prototype 200-kw. Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (Vasimr) engine on the International Space Station’s Z1 truss structure in 2014. About 100 NASA employees, primarily from the Extravehicular Activity (EVA) office, already have been assigned to work with Houston-based Ad Astra, and an agreement for additional engineering support from Johnson Space Center in Houston is pending, says company founder and chief executive Franklin Chang-Diaz, a physicist and former NASA astronaut.
With two near-perfect Falcon 9 launches and the successful orbital operation, reentry and parachute landing of its first Dragon capsule, Space Exploration Technologies is confident it will join Russian, European and Japanese cargo ships in reaching the International Space Station next year, a critical component of NASA’s plan to maintain a six-person crew after the space shuttles are retired.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A Dragon capsule developed, launched and operated by Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) had a successful debut flight Dec. 8, splashing down in the Pacific after executing a preprogrammed set of maneuvers in orbit designed to simulate approach and docking with the International Space Station.
