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.
Russian intends to fly cosmonauts to the Chinese Space Station, launching Soyuz capsules from its own Vostochny Cosmodrome or Europe’s Kourou, French Guiana, spaceport, though neither site has yet supported a human spaceflight, the head of Roscosmos, the Russian State Space Corp., said on June 15.
Bidding to ride on the first passenger flight of Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital spacecraft closed at $28 million, with the unnamed winner to join company founder and funder Jeff Bezos, his brother and one other person for a ride slated for July 20.
