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.
Congress and the White House are working on a compromise blueprint for NASA that would maintain a skeletal space shuttle capability, begin heavy-lift booster development, fund an Orion-type capsule for deep space human travel and test alternative contracting arrangements to sire a commercial U.S. human space transportation industry.
A NASA oversight committee unanimously passed a bill July 15 that supports the Obama administration’s plan to end the Constellation Moon program — in name anyway — but replaces the White House’s proposed technology initiatives with a heavy-lift rocket program, continued support for the space shuttle and an Orion-like capsule capable of deep space travel.
CAPE CANVERAL, Fla. — The external fuel tank earmarked for the STS-134 flight of shuttle Endeavour, currently the final mission of the space shuttle program, arrived at the Kennedy Space Center on July 13, but commemorations may be premature.
