NASA is targeting Oct. 27 for the launch of Ares 1-X, a suborbital prototype of the rocket the agency has been developing since 2005 to loft the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle into space.

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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...