WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. BarackObama (D-Ill.), the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate, sought to reassure Florida’s Space Coast voters that the challenges facing NASA as it prepares to retire the space shuttle are squarely on his radar.

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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...