WASHINGTON — Big-ticket missions to collect martian soil samples and study the expansion of the universe are two early casualties of U.S. President Barack Obama’s proposal to cut NASA’s 2013 budget by 0.3 percent next year, according to White House budget documents released Feb. 13.

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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. His reporting on the 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia accident was recognized with...