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.
NEW YORK — Defunct microsatellites pose a growing space debris risk and must be better tracked in orbit, according to Gary Payton, deputy undersecretary of the U.S. Air Force for space. “Some people call these microsats,” Payton said during the Space Foundation’s Space Business Forum here June 4. “Ten years after their launch, they become space debris. They become potential ASATs. We need to keep track of these smaller and smaller spacecraft.”
NEW YORK — Space tourist Richard Garriott believes an “inflection point” is coming in which the cost of access to space will drop low enough to reveal a variety of viable new commercial space ventures beyond just tourism or communications. An entrepreneur who made his fortune in the computer game industry, Garriott took his first trip to space last October, flying on a Russian Soyuz vehicle to the International Space Station and spending 12 days in orbit.
NASA on June 1 announced the full membership of the blue-ribbon panel chaired by former Lockheed Martin CEO Norm Augustine that will deliver an assessment of NASA’s human spaceflight options to the White House by September.
