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.
Contractor teams are awaiting word from NASA on its new acquisition strategy for the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV), which newly appointed Administrator Michael Griffin seeks to accelerate to close any gap in U.S. manned spaceflight capability following the retirement of the space shuttle in 2010. The front-runners in the competition are a team led by Lockheed Martin and a team led by Northrop Grumman and Boeing. The teams expect NASA to spend the next month or two re-evaluating the program before getting back to industry with the changes.
The long-awaited launch of the first of three next-generation Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES-N) for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and NASA has been postponed from May to late June to allow technicians time to replace potentially faulty pressure vessels onboard the Delta IV rocket.
Administrator Michael Griffin said during a speech in Washington May 3 that NASA will pick the cheapest option for launching the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) into orbit, but added that he will not discard the space shuttle's launch stack "lightly." "It's my job now to be a responsible steward of the government's money," Griffin said during a breakfast sponsored by Women in Aerospace (WIA). "I will be advocating whatever method of getting Crew Exploration Vehicle to orbit that seems to me to be the cheapest."
