DREAMS of a moon base will have to remain just that. The US is cancelling Constellation, the Bush-era plan to return humans to the moon by 2020. The programme is a victim of cuts announced by President Barack Obama in his 2011 budget request.
The cancellation will leave NASA without its own rocket capable of sending astronauts into space after the retirement of the space shuttle later this year. Instead, NASA is betting that astronauts will be able to pay for rides to and from the International Space Station on commercial launch vehicles.
The new plan must now be approved by Congress. The White House faces fierce opposition from officials who represent areas with thousands of jobs tied to the Constellation programme.
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It was not all bad news, however. The space station will now be funded until 2020, rather than being abandoned after 2015 to free up money for the moon shot. And NASA is to invest $7.8 billion over the next five years on new technology for human space exploration, such as orbiting fuel depots that could act as staging posts for future missions.
Science as a whole also fared well. Obama is seeking $61.6 billion for research in 2011, 5.6 per cent more than in 2010. Among the winners is clean-energy research, with $300 million requested for the new Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, created to make investments in potentially game-changing energy technologies.