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.
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. — NASA has postponed the Oct. 29 start of the countdown for the STS-133 mission, the 39th and final flight of shuttle Discovery, to replace couplings in the right-hand Orbital Maneuvering System (OMS) helium line. The work, which NASA Test Director Jeff Spaulding says is “not very complicated…we’ve done it in the past,” nevertheless requires time-consuming tank repressurization and launch pad clearance, precluding other pre-flight activities.
NASA is upping the ante for commercial human space travel with $200 million in the offing for companies to flesh out or flight-test technologies, an effort that will bolster a new market being pioneered by Bigelow Aerospace to operate leased outposts in orbit.
CAPE CANAVERAL — Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) is awaiting an FAA license to fly its Dragon capsule through the atmosphere, following launch on a Falcon 9 rocket targeted for Nov. 18 from Cape Canaveral AFS, Fla. The launch license was granted Oct. 15. The pending re-entry license will be the first ever issued by FAA, according to George Nield, FAA’s associate administrator for Commercial Space Transportation.
