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. — Rollover of shuttle Discovery to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) was delayed Sept. 8 when Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station were shut down to all but mission-essential personnel due to a water main break. Discovery’s move to the VAB had been scheduled for 6:30 a.m., but shortly before it was to begin the quarter-mile trek, the center lost pressure in its potable water lines. Both KSC and CCAFS receive water from the City of Cocoa, which had no additional information about the break.
NASA has revived a hurricane flight research program that has been dormant for nearly a decade with a trio of flights over Hurricane Earl with an instrument-laden DC-8 flying out of Fort Lauderdale International Airport. Joining the DC-8 mothership for the first time was NASA’s newly acquired Global Hawk aircraft, staged out of Dryden Flight Research Center in California. The first simultaneous overflights of a hurricane with the DC-8 and the Global Hawk were completed Sept. 2 and included several passes directly above the hurricane’s eye.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) has requested Oct. 23 on the 45th Space Wing’s calendar for launch of its second Falcon 9 rocket, which will aim to place a Dragon cargo capsule into orbit. The flight is the first of up to three launches planned under SpaceX’s $278-million Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) contract with NASA, which is intended to help pay for the rocket and capsule’s design, development and flight testing.
