Source: Space News
Pledging to send astronauts to an asteroid by 2025, U.S. President Barack Obama defended his decision to pull the plug on NASA’s Moon mission, saying the new course he set for the U.S. space agency promises to take astronauts beyond Earth orbit farther and faster than the old plan.
“I understand that some believe we should attempt a return to the surface of the Moon first, as previously planned,” Obama told an invitation-only audience in an April 15 speech at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. “But I just have to say pretty bluntly here. We’ve been there before … there’s a lot more of space to explore, and a lot more to learn when we do. So I believe it’s more important to ramp up our capabilities to reach and operate at a series of increasingly demanding targets while advancing our technological capabilities with each step forward. And that’s what this strategy does. And that’s how we will ensure that our leadership in space is even stronger in this new century than it was in the last.”
Obama’s 2011 budget request, submitted to Congress in February, proposes the cancellation of the Moon-bound Constellation program in favor of extending NASA’s support of the international space station through at least 2020 and investing is game-changing technologies aimed at speeding the human and robotic exploration of deep space. Obama’s initiative also puts a strong emphasis on relying on an emerging commercial space sector for launching astronauts and their gear to the international space space station.
Obama said that under his plan, U.S. astronauts will venture beyond Earth’s orbit in 2025, starting with a crewed mission to an asteroid.
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