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.
CAPE CANAVERAL — While Congress mulls conflicting blueprints for NASA’s human space program, 1,394 space shuttle workers in Florida, Texas and Alabama got notice this week of what their future looks like — no job. Following through on an initiative announced earlier this month, prime shuttle contractor United Space Alliance (USA) notified 902 employees in Florida, 478 workers in Texas and 14 in Alabama that Sept. 30 will be their last day of work.
CAPE CANAVERAL — Two satellites of NASA’s five-member Themis constellation, launched in February 2007 to study geomagnetic storms, are approaching lunar orbit for a new mission called Artemis. NASA has yet to authorize funding for Artemis (Acceleration Reconnection and Turbulence and Electrodynamics of the Moon’s Interaction with the Sun), but there was no time to wait. Left in their previous orbits, the satellites would have fallen into prolonged periods of deep shadow that likely would have resulted in their demise.
NASA is considering keeping shuttle Discovery as a donor vehicle after it returns from its last scheduled spaceflight this fall. “We’re having the discussions right now as to when we start to take Discovery off of flight status,” Shuttle Program Manager John Shannon said in an interview. “It may be more beneficial to us to keep Discovery in a flight-ready state as a donor vehicle in case Endeavour or Atlantis needed any parts that we didn’t have sufficient stock of.”
