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 mission team for NASA's Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter (JIMO) is weighing the pros and cons of incorporating a lander that would touch down on the surface of Europa. JIMO's Science Definition Team (SDT) has recommended that the spacecraft include a lander that would perform a soft landing on Europa and bore into its frozen surface. The team determined that the lander was valuable enough to devote up to one quarter of the JIMO's 1,500-kilogram (3,306 pound) science payload to it.
The project team for NASA's ambitious Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter (JIMO) plans to work with NASA leadership to obtain a higher budget request for the mission during its crucial development years. Scheduled to launch no earlier than 2011, the multibillion-dollar JIMO mission will be the first flight demonstration of the space nuclear power and propulsion technology being developed under NASA's Prometheus effort.
NASA is grappling with a defect discovered in the Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) that are used in many of the agency's spacecraft. An FPGA is an integrated circuit that can be programmed in the field after manufacture. FPGA manufacturer Actel Corporation of Mountain View, Calif., discovered the anomaly with the FPGAs, in which some of them begin to behave unpredictably after 700 hours of use.
