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.
A program led by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory's (AFRL) Propulsion Directorate is developing technologies to one day enable new upper-stage rocket engines that would succeed Pratt & Whitney's RL10. Teams led by Aerojet and Northrop Grumman are competing in the nine-month first phase of the effort, dubbed the Upper Stage Engine Technology (USET) program. In this phase, the companies are developing software and modeling tools for the turbopump and thrust chamber assembly of the engine, which would be in the 40,000-pound thrust class.
NASA's Mars Exploration Rover (MER) "Spirit" is stuck in a loop in which it periodically resets its computer as a result of a problem that may be hardware related, MER Project Manager Peter Theisinger said Jan. 23. Each time the flight software is reloaded, the computer discovers a condition requiring it to reset, Theisinger said, although that condition is not always the same. Spirit had attempted to reset itself over 60 times as of Jan. 23, he said.
The International Space Station (ISS) program is reviewing its procedures for detecting leaks in response to a small leak that required two passes by station astronauts to detect. Expedition 8 Commander Mike Foale and Flight Engineer Alexander Kaleri eventually traced the cause of the slow loss of cabin pressure, which had been occurring since December (DAILY, Jan. 7), to a braided flex hose adjacent to a window in the U.S. Destiny Laboratory.
