NASA expects to fly 19 space shuttle missions between 2006 and the orbiter fleet’s planned retirement in 2010, completing by then a six-person international space station that would include most but not all of the hardware being built by the U.S. space agency’s international partners.

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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...