Jeff has been involved in aerospace journalism since the mid 1990s. Prior to joining Aviation Week, Jeff served as managing editor of Launchspace magazine and the International Space Industry Report. He has been the editor and chief of Aviation Week's Aerospace Daily & Defense Report since 2007 and has been a regular contributor to Aviation Week magazine. He received his B.A. from the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va.
NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) is calling on the next Congress and presidential administration to make quick decisions about the leadership of NASA when they take office next year. “The ASAP continues to offer its counsel to NASA, but at this significant point in national affairs, the panel will also seek to convey several views to the incoming Presidential administration and Congress,” the group says in its 2007 annual report.
INTELSAT ORDER: Intelsat has picked Orbital Sciences Corp. to build the Intelsat-18 (IS-18) communications satellite. To be based on Orbital’s STAR-2 platform, IS-18 will carry 24 C-band transponders to cover the Northern and Southern Hemispheres and 12 Ku-band transponders to provide services to the United States, French Polynesia, Australia, New Caledonia and other Pacific Islands. IS-18 will replace Intelsat’s IS-701 spacecraft.
Managers with NASA’s Constellation program say the Ares I rocket design still has about 6,600 pounds of performance margin after the addition of hardware to dampen vibrations during its ascent. The vibration fixes are estimated to cost the Ares system about 1,200-1,400 pounds to orbit. The fix hardware itself will weigh about ten times that, but since it’s discarded with the first stage, the mass penalty is not a one-to-one ratio, NASA officials said during a teleconference Aug. 19.
