It might seem a bit unusual for a lawmaker from Houston, home to NASA’s Johnson Space Center, to be an outspoken advocate of the agency’s planetary science program, which resides half a continent — and in the figurative sense, a full world — away in Pasadena, California.

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Dan Leone is a SpaceNews staff writer, covering NASA, NOAA and a growing number of entrepreneurial space companies. He earned a bachelor’s degree in public communications from the American University in Washington.