Source: Florida Today
President Barack Obama passionately made a case Thursday for a major course correction for the U.S. space program while challenging NASA to ready the nation for missions beyond the moon.
A polite crowd of 200 at Kennedy Space Center listened as Obama countered a widespread perception that his administration aims to kill the U.S. human spaceflight program.
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Saying, “nobody is more committed to manned spaceflight, to human exploration of space than I am,” Obama called on NASA to fly American astronauts to an asteroid by 2025 and then launch human expeditions to Mars by the mid-2030s.
But for those hanging on to hopes for an extension of shuttle fleet operations, there was no reprieve. NASA’s shuttle program will end after nearly 30 years with the landing of the 134th mission later this year.
Some 8,000 people at KSC expect to be jobless, a fact not lost on Obama.
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