WASHINGTON — The chairman of the U.S. House subcommittee with NASA funding responsibility is asking the White House to identify programs whose budgets would have to be cut to cover skyrocketing costs on the agency’s next flagship-class astronomy observatory.

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Warren Ferster is the Editor-in-Chief of SpaceNews and is responsible for all the news and editorial coverage in the weekly newspaper, the spacenews.com Web site and variety of specialty publications such as show dailies. He manages a staff of seven reporters...