As NASA gears up for the major investments in the hardware and other technology it will need to send astronauts back to the Moon and on to Mars, the agency also must set aside funding to overhaul and expand its communications infrastructure.

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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...