The explosion of an Orbital Sciences Corp. Antares rocket seconds after liftoff Oct. 28 will likely have a modest near-term effect on NASA and international space station operations, but a far greater one on the future of the Antares itself.

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Jeff Foust has more than a decade of experience writing about space policy, entrepreneurial ventures and regulatory affairs. In 2001, he established spacetoday.net to aggregate and summarize the day's space-related news stories. In 2003, he started The...