President Barack Obama's 2011 budget request has effectively shut down NASA's five-year effort to return astronauts to the moon, leaving the U.S. space agency with lofty goals — but no firm deadlines — to once again send humans beyond Earth orbit.
The budget request, released Monday, would scrap NASA's Constellation program to build the Orion spacecraft and Ares rockets for new manned moon missions — a $9 billion investment to date. The request calls for $19 billion in funding for NASA in 2011, a slight increase from the $18.3 billion it spent in 2010.
The request does, however, pledge extra funding to extend the life of the International Space Station through at least 2020 and offers $6 billion over five years to support commercially built spaceships to launch NASA astronauts into space. The space agency's three remaining space shuttles are due to retire later this year.
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NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, a former space shuttle commander, said that while the budget cancels the program building the agency's space shuttle replacement — the Orion crew vehicle — it is not trading away safety to embrace new, privately built spaceships to fly astronauts. It also paves the way for a "21st-century space program," he said.
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