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.
The U.S. Air Force is beginning to reclaim government management of sustainment of its large fighter, transport and, eventually, unmanned aircraft fleets after a wholesale review of its maintenance oversight practices. The service announced last week it will restructure the oversight of C-17 sustainment after Boeing’s current contractor logistics support (CLS) contract runs out at the end of Fiscal 2011. The current contract is worth roughly $1 billion annually.
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.
