Irene Klotz is Senior Space Editor for Aviation Week, based in Cape Canaveral. Before joining Aviation Week in 2017, Irene spent 25 years as a wire service reporter covering human and robotic spaceflight, commercial space, astronomy, science and technology for Reuters and United Press International. She also worked with Discovery Communications, Discovery News and was a founding member of Space.com.
Irene cut her teeth on the space beat at Florida Today newspaper, a business writer enchanted by the colorful entrepreneurs who wanted access to Air Force launch facilities and assets after commercial payloads were taken off the space shuttles following the 1986 Challenger accident. Commercial space remains the focus of her work, along with a keen interest in the search for life beyond Earth.
A graduate of Northwestern University, Irene is the 2014 recipient of the Harry Kolcum Memorial News and Communications Award, named in honor of the late Aviation Week managing editor and Cape Canaveral senior editor who was among Irene’s earliest mentors.
Flight controllers at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore deployed the secondary mirror on the James Webb Space Telescope on Jan. 5, as the list of critical reconfigurations to prepare the observatory for its unprecedented science mission neared completion.
Flight controllers overseeing the newly launched James Webb Space Telescope breezed through the deployment and positioning of the observatory’s five-layer, tennis court-sized sunshield, completing what was considered the most technically complicated part of the mission ahead of schedule.
