NASA went ahead and accepted Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) proposals from teams led by Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman even as the U.S. space agency continues to develop plans to speed up by several years its multibillion-dollar effort to replace the space shuttle with a vehicle capable of going to the Moon.

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Brian Berger is editor in chief of SpaceNews.com and the SpaceNews magazine. He joined SpaceNews.com in 1998, spending his first decade with the publication covering NASA. He was named senior staff writer in 2004, a position he held until being named...