NASA will need to obey this new rule

Jan 28, 2010 14:21 GMT  ·  By

US President Barack Obama will suggest in his budget proposal that NASA renounces its mission of returning to the Moon by 2020. Rather, the space agency will need to focus on fostering innovation in the private sector, and also on reclaiming its former status, as a leader of new science and technology when it comes to space exploration. While its budget for the next five years will be increased by $6 billion, most of this money will have to be awarded to private corporations. As a compensation of sorts, the President will propose extending the deadline of the International Space Station (ISS) by at least 2020, Space reports.

It is the view of the President that the United States should focus more on achievements closer to home, such as the low-Earth orbit. He believes that humans will indeed have to explore the surrounding celestial bodies, but explains that missions to near-Earth Objects (NEO) could provide incentives for scientific achievements and advancements. In order for the country, and NASA, to be able to focus on these objectives, the burden of figuring out ways of sending US astronauts to the ISS needs to be relieved. Additionally, the White House is planning to reduce American dependency on Russian-built spacecraft, which will be the only ones left with orbital capabilities for human crews.

“Budgets are very tight, [and Project Constellation has taken] an unsustainable trajectory. For NASA to be getting new money over the projections is to me an indication of how seriously this administration takes NASA and our goal of future innovations for this country,” Sally Ride says. The former astronaut served on the Augustine Commission, the panel that Obama appointed in the last half of 2009 to assess possible avenues of development for the American space agency. The panel was led by a former CEO of Lockheed Martin, one of the largest contractors in the world.

“My biggest fear is that this amounts to a slow death of our nation's human spaceflight program, a retreat from America's decades of leadership in space, ending the economic advantages that our space program has brought to the US and ceding space to the Russians, Chinese and others. Until we have a clearer plan for the future, the only realistic and reasonable way to preserve America's leadership in space is to provide for a temporary extension of the shuttle,” US Rep. Bill Posey, R-Rockledge, says. Indeed, India has just recently announced that it plans to conduct a manned space mission by 2016.