Obama withdraws NASA funding

In his most recent weekly address, the US President Barack Obama has made a pledge to help get the country back on track by promising a series of money-saving exercises, including cancelling NASA’s Constellation program.

President Obama used his weekly address to summarise his 2011 Budget Request. Citing three major steps to achieving his economic goal, Obama proposed a “freeze in discretionary spending, which will increase investments in jobs creation and middle class tax cuts while cutting spending for redundant or ineffective programs.”

The Constellation program which was planning to return astronauts to the Moon 50 years after Apollo 13 did so, has been deemed unsustainable given the current need to save money where possible.

According to a statement from NASA Administrator Charles Boden, following Obama’s budget announcement, the Augustine Committee had already determined “There are insufficient funds to develop the lunar lander and lunar surface systems until well into the 2030’s, if ever.”

However, it would seem that a question posed to Peter Orszag, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, during a briefing on Monday may have had some foresight.

In response to the accusation that retreating from Moon expeditions gives a message to US rivals that it has “given up”, Mr Orszag responded defensively: “Not at all. We believe that NASA can inspire Americans and lead to scientific advances.

“What we’re saying is let’s redirect that [budget] towards longer-range R&D, advanced robotics, and find those new technologies that will actually allow us to go further in space and not just repeat what we’ve already done.”

Boden conceded that as much as his team wanted to finish what they had started he could do nothing but support the decision: “As we focused so much of our effort and funding on just getting to the Moon, we were neglecting investments in the key technologies that would be required to go beyond.”

However, according to reports today, experts say that one of the US’ biggest space rivals – China – could land its first astronauts on the Moon within a decade, in a move that would make the beginning of a new age of lunar exploration.