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 Dryden Flight Research Center is planning to develop four new classes of high-altitude/long-endurance (HALE) unmanned aerial vehicles for research missions over the next 14 years, according to John Del Frate, Dryden's project manager for HALE UAV technology development. Dryden's UAV technology work is moving away from the Joint Sponsored Research Agreement model, on which the center's Environmental Research Aircraft and Sensor Technology (ERAST) UAV program was based, toward a more traditional competitive approach.
The cuts to NASA's fiscal year 2005 budget request contained in the House Appropriations Committee's NASA spending bill effectively would halt the agency's plans to develop a Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) and achieve new breakthroughs in in-space propulsion, according to Administrator Sean O'Keefe. "We can't do this at the levels that they've contemplated," O'Keefe told Senate lawmakers at a Sept. 8 hearing.
Despite the severe damage done to NASA's Genesis sample return capsule when it crashed into the ground in Utah Sept. 8, the science team remains "very hopeful" of getting good scientific results out of the mission, according to David Lindstrom, Genesis program scientist at NASA headquarters.
