WASHINGTON — NASA has claimed three of the five remaining rockets from the discontinued Delta 2 program and will use those vehicles, along with a relatively new rocket design, the Falcon 9, to launch four Earth observation satellites from the West Coast between 2014 and 2016, NASA announced July 16.

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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...