NASA’s heavy-lift Space Launch System (SLS) has extensive heritage in the space shuttle, which was retired over the summer, and in the Ares rocket hardware that was designed under the agency’s relatively short-lived Constellation lunar exploration program.

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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...