Based in Washington, Jen managed Aviation Week’s worldwide defense, space and security coverage from 2013 to January 2024.
Prior to taking on the Executive Editor role, Jen was Aviation Week's Congressional Editor. Jen came to Aviation Week in March 2011 from Politico, where she covered the intersection of defense and politics. She also worked as a reporter and editor for Defense Daily, Inside the Army, The Other Paper and The Columbus Dispatch.
Jen received a Master’s degree in journalism as a Kiplinger Fellow at the Ohio State University. She graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in history and journalism from the University of Michigan.
NASA hopes its renewed long-term focus on human exploration of Mars will keep its programs moving ahead in the face of real-time upsets in the fiscal and political environment where it operates. Wherever they can find a pulpit, NASA managers have been preaching their “path-to-Mars” approach—“Earth-reliant” R&D on the space station, missions of up to a year in the “proving ground” around the Moon and “Mars-ready” human flights of as long as three years with the Orion/Space Launch System (SLS) combo.
Three of NASA’s top priorities – the Orion spacecraft, the Space Launch System (SLS) heavy-lift rocket and the James Webb Space Telescope – fared well in a bill to authorize $17.64 billion in fiscal 2015 for the space agency approved by the House Science, Space and Technology Committee on April 29. The same could not be said for NASA’s commercial crew program. The committee sliced $152 million from the Obama administration’s $848 million request.
