WASHINGTON — U.S. astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria has left NASA to become president of the Washington-based Commercial Spaceflight Federation (CSF), an advocacy group for private space companies.

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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...