Bush's New Direction For NASA Guts Science

The good news, NASA has a direction of manned spaced exploration. The bad news, the unmanned science budget is gutted.

The agency intends to return to the moon early next decade in preparation for sending crews to explore Mars and nearby asteroids, the officials said. Such endeavors would require a new generation of spacecraft, but in the interim, American astronauts would use Europe's Ariane rockets and Russia's Soyuz capsules.

Along with retiring the shuttle fleet, the new plan calls for NASA to convert a planned follow-on spacecraft - called the orbital space plane - into versions of a new spaceship called the crew exploration vehicle (CEV). NASA would end substantial involvement in the space station project about the same time the moon landings would begin ? starting in 2013, according to an administration timetable shown to UPI.

During the remainder of its participation in space station activities, NASA's research would be redirected to sustaining humans in space. Other research programs not involving humans would be terminated or curtailed.

Sources said Mr. Bush will direct NASA to scale back or scrap all existing programs that do not support the new effort. Further details about the plan and the space agency's revised budget will be announced in NASA briefings next week and when the president delivers his FY 2005 budget to Congress at the beginning of February.