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 Genesis mission is scheduled to culminate Sept. 8 when helicopter crews in the skies over Utah will attempt to catch in midair a sample capsule released by the spacecraft. Launched in August 2001, the Lockheed Martin-built Genesis spacecraft spent two years orbiting a libration point between the Earth and the sun collecting solar particles. Trapped on delicate wafers of gold, sapphire, silicon and diamond, the samples will shed light on the composition of the sun and the origins of our solar system, according to NASA.
Starting in fiscal year 2005, NASA's Mars Technology Program (MTP) will begin focusing heavily on technologies that will enable the agency's ambitious Mars sample return mission, scheduled for launch in 2013.
The first flight of Bell Helicopter's full-scale Eagle Eye unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) demonstrator has been pushed back from the end of this year to February 2005 to allow for additional upgrades that should enable a continuous flight-test schedule, according to Robert Dompka, Bell's director of tiltrotor UAVs. "Rather than fly in the fourth quarter and just get air under the wheels and put it back down to mod, we're delaying it until February of '05 so we can incorporate a few features," Dompka told The DAILY.
