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.
President Barack Obama on April 15 sketched out plans for an invigorated space exploration program that will put astronauts on an asteroid in the 2020s and in orbit around Mars a decade later. Speaking before an invitation-only audience at Kennedy Space Center’s Operations and Checkout (O&C) Building, Obama made no mention of extending the space shuttle or restarting manufacturing lines to provide components for a future heavy-lift rocket.
A commercially provided water generation system is now aboard the International Space Station as part of the STS-131 payload, a key milestone in a unique contracting arrangement between NASA and Hamilton Sundstrand Space, Land & Sea. The United Technologies Corp. subsidiary, best known as the manufacturer of NASA’s Extravehicular Mobility Activity suits, built the Sabatier Reactor System to provide the space station with an alternative chemical reaction water production facility.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The first Russian cargo to fly from Kennedy Space Center to the International Space Station is being prepared for launch aboard space shuttle Atlantis’s final planned flight, STS-132, targeted for liftoff on May 14.
