The U.S. Senate passed a NASA authorization bill late Dec. 9 that, while it will not become law this year, could serve as a template for a similar bill in the next Congress.

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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...