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.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Kennedy Space Center at 9:03 p.m. EST on Nov. 10 to deliver a Crew Dragon spacecraft carrying four astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA.
About 6 hr. ahead of when SpaceX was due to launch four new crewmembers to the International Space Station on Nov. 10, Russia conducted a 361-sec. burn of the station’s core module to maneuver the outpost away from a potential conjunction with a piece of orbital debris from China’s 2007 ASAT test.
Development costs for NASA’s Orion deep-space capsule through the Artemis II crewed flight test—which is now not expected until May 2024—will increase by $2.5 billion due to an expanded scope of work, delays from pandemic-related supply issues and other factors, boosting the program’s overall cost to $9.3 billion.
