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.
Although the U.S. won’t be able to meet the Congressionally mandated goal of locating and cataloging most near-Earth objects 140 meters across or larger by 2020, it could come close to that deadline if a new space-based observatory is dedicated to the task in concert with a suitable ground-based telescope, according to a National Academies panel.
NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft is being encapsulated at Astrotech’s processing facility near Kennedy Space Center in Florida in anticipation of launching next month on an Atlas V rocket. Built at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., the spacecraft was shipped by truck to Astrotech last June for a planned launch in November of that year. But liftoff was pushed back as a result of delays with another spacecraft that sent ripples through the launch schedule, according to Dana Brewer, program executive for SDO.
NATO deployed its alliance-owned C-17s to Haiti this week, marking the first humanitarian assistance flight for the fleet based at Papa air base, Hungary. Sweden used some of its allotment of flight hours for the earthquake relief mission under the pooling mechanism governing the Strategic Airlift Capability consortium. The airlifter carried aid from several Scandinavian countries.