The White House proposed grounding SOFIA in part to avoid forcing the 16-year-old Cassini orbiter to compete with the one-and-a-half year-old Mars Curiosity rover for extended mission funding.

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Dan Leone is the NASA reporter for SpaceNews, where he also covers other civilian-run U.S. government space programs and a growing number of entrepreneurial space companies. He joined SpaceNews in 2011.Dan earned a bachelor's degree in public communications...