By Austin Modine - 1st February 2010 21:21 GMT
President Barack Obama is calling on NASA to cancel its plans to return astronauts to the moon by 2020 and instead focus on developing "building blocks" for future deep space exploration as well as partnerships with private industry.
The canned lunar program, called Constellation, "was over budget, behind schedule, and lacking in innovation due to a failure to invest in critical new technologies," according to the White House budget plan issued today. It said NASA's attempts to pursue its moon goals had drawn funding away from other programs, such as robotic exploration and Earth observations.
Confirming reports circulating last week, Constellation — which has already burned through about $9bn to develop the Orion crew capsule and Ares rockets — will be scrapped outright. Under the new plan however, NASA would receive a $6bn funding increase over the next five years to research new means of manned missions to the moon and beyond.
Between now and fiscal 2015, NASA would re-prioritize its funds to extend operations of the International Space Station past its planned retirement in 2016, beef investments in space research by private industry and academia, and launch a "steady stream" of robotic exploration missions to scout potential locations and demonstrate new systems for future human missions.
During a teleconference Monday, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden emphasized that canning Constellation was a necessary decision.
"As much as we would not like it to be the case, and taking nothing away from the hard work and dedication of our team, the truth is that we were not on a path to get back to the moon's surface," he said. "And as we focused so much of our effort and funding on just getting back to the Moon, we were neglecting investments in key technologies that would be required to go beyond."
Former astronaut Sally Ride, an Augustine panel member, called the budget a "significant vote of confidence in NASA" that puts the agency on a sustainable path toward the future.
"The Augustine committee concluded that the previous trajectory that NASA was on was simply not sustainable," Ride said. "NASA was struggling under its own weight, the ISS was to be sacrificed at the end of 2015 to fund the Constellation program, NASA's technology program had been allowed to wither, and it's science had also suffered."
<more, including a link to the 2011 NASA budget at>
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/02/01/white_house_2011_budget_nasa_constellation/
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