Without a separate vote or even a debate, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) has managed to deliver to a delighted NASA enough money to forge ahead on a plan that would reshape U.S. space policy for decades to come. President Bush's "Vision for Space Exploration," which would send humans to the moon and eventually to Mars, got a skeptical reception in January and was left for dead in midsummer, but it made a stunning last-minute comeback when DeLay delivered NASA's full $16.2 billion budget request as part of the omnibus $388 billion spending bill passed Nov. 20, 2004

When the history of this lame duck Congress is written, historians may make little notes about the dustup over intelligence reform. However, their long memories are likely to record that, by funding the President's space initiative, this was a lame duck that soared. The $16.2 billion that Congress authorized for NASA, a five percent increase in its budget, made it official that mankind is headed outwards again -- to the moon, to Mars, and beyond. The House also passed a revised commercial space bill, which just a short time ago, was pronounced deader than Tom Daschle's political career.

With a green light from Congress, NASA is moving swiftly to carry out President Bush's ambitious plan to return robots and humans to the moon and eventually to Mars. The United States is also seeking foreign partners for the hugely expensive project, hoping to save money and avoid wasteful duplication. Space officials from 17 countries, including China, Russia, Japan and much of Europe, participated in a planning workshop in Washington last week. Representatives from each nation said they intend to participate in at least the planning phase.

Shifting NASA priorities toward risky, expensive missions to the moon and Mars will mean neglecting the most promising space science efforts, states the American Physical Society (APS) Special Committee on NASA Funding for Astrophysics, in a report released today. The committee points out that the total cost of NASA's ill-defined Moon-Mars initiative is unknown as yet, but is likely to be a substantial drain on NASA resources. As currently envisioned, the initiative will rely on human astronauts who will establish a base on the moon and subsequently travel to Mars. The program is in contrast to recent, highly successful NASA missions, including the Hubble Space telescope, the Mars Rover, and Explorer missions, which have revolutionized our understanding of the universe while relying on comparatively cheap, unmanned and robotic instruments. It is likely that such programs will have to be scaled back or eliminated in the wake of much more expensive and dangerous manned space exploration, according to the committee.

The moon-Mars mission proposed by President Bush in January -- one we have strongly supported as the key to unimaginable technological progress -- is in danger of starvation in Congress. That should be ringing alarm bells for the entire Florida delegation, including Democratic Sens. Bill Nelson and Bob Graham, and local GOP Representatives Dave Weldon and Tom Feeney. With the short lame-duck session under way this week, they and their state colleagues must get to work to make sure NASA is assured all the money needed to get the potentially historic venture under way.

On the eve of the Presidential election, Americans continue to support human space flight and endorse the Space Exploration plan to return to the Moon and to Mars, but they also question the relationship of NASA to its constituents. A comprehensive, in-depth study by Dittmar Associates aimed at understanding public perceptions of NASA and particularly the Space Exploration Program reveals that Americans continue to support human space flight, with 69% supporting Space Exploration and 26% opposed.

While a team of aerospace engineers takes aim this week on the $10 million Ansari X Prize competition for privately developed suborbital spaceflight, a Nevada millionaire is planning an even loftier contest. Robert Bigelow, chief of Las Vegas-based Bigelow Aerospace, is apparently setting higher goals for private spaceflight endeavors with America's Space Prize, a $50 million race to build an orbital vehicle capable of carrying up to seven astronauts to an orbital outpost by the end of the decade, according to Aviation Week and Space Technology. Bigelow told Aviation Week that not only would Space Prize winners secure the $50 million purse, half of which he's putting up himself, but also snag options to service inflatable space habitats under development by Bigelow Aerospace.

The Bigelow Aerospace project to privately develop inflatable Earth-orbit space modules is beginning to integrate diverse U.S. and European technologies into subscale and full-scale inflatable test modules and subsystems at the company's heavily guarded facilities here. While much public attention is focused on the massive International Space Station (ISS), Bigelow has quietly become a mini-Skunk Works for the NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC). Ongoing technical assistance to Bigelow from JSC is focused on helping the company spawn development of orbiting commercial inflatable modules by the end of the decade, with the possibility of JSC later using the Bigelow technology for inflatable modules on the Moon or Mars.

The cuts to NASA's fiscal year 2005 budget request contained in the House Appropriations Committee's NASA spending bill effectively would halt the agency's plans to develop a Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) and achieve new breakthroughs in in-space propulsion, according to Administrator Sean O'Keefe. "We can't do this at the levels that they've contemplated," O'Keefe told Senate lawmakers at a Sept. 8, 2004 hearing.

President George W. Bush's new space exploration plan has received a burst of hard-core support in Congress, aimed at blocking any attempt to cut its funding, and backed up by a rare veto threat from the president himself. This development has emerged in the wake of action by a House appropriations subcommittee last week, which cut the administration's NASA budget request for fiscal year 2005 by more than $1 billion. Presidential veto threats have been a rarity in the Bush White House. Also, no U.S. president has ever vetoed a spending bill because it contained too little money for space programs.

John Kerry brought two astronauts with him to campaign at the Kennedy Space Center. He strolled among the rocket relics. And he recalled a day when those rockets were the tools a dedicated army of Americans used to do what then seemed impossible. But in the heart of a community where more than 20,000 people work on space programs, the Democrats' candidate for president met with a roomful of voters without commenting on President Bush's proposal to send astronauts to the moon and Mars or offering a specific vision of his own for exploring space.

Of course, the only comments from a Democratic presidential candidate in 2004 that have come to have any real relevance to the future progress of Bush's new space policy (should Bush lose) are those of John Kerry, the Democratic Party's 2004 nominee. The day after Bush's speech, the San Francisco Chronicle quoted Kerry as saying, "Rather than sending Americans to Mars or the Moon right now, these people would be better off trying to figure out how to get Americans back from Iraq."

The White House has threatened to veto a spending bill that would deny NASA the funding it is counting on to get started on a new space exploration agenda next year. The veto threat was issued after the House Appropriations Committee voted Thursday to cut President George W. Bush’s 2005 budget request for NASA by $1.1 billion, a move that would leave the space agency with $229 million less than it has this year.

Funds for President George W. Bush's plan to use the moon as a base for possible manned missions to Mars were cut by more than half next year in a bill approved by a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration would get $15.1 billion under the bill, which cuts $538 million from Bush's plan to spend $910 million on the Mars proposal in the 2005 fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, 2004.

What happens when worlds collide? NASA will find out next month — not by launching an interplanetary probe, but by inviting aerospace entrepreneurs to help flesh out the agency's plan to reward feats on the final frontier. The June 15-16 workshop in Washington will focus on drawing up NASA's first batch of "Centennial Challenges" — government-funded competitions that would encourage non-governmental teams to develop technologies vital to NASA's exploration initiative. For example, a better astronaut glove might earn its developers $1 million, while the first team to put a privately funded lander on the moon could win $20 million.

Mistaken as gospel and spread around the country by countless news outlets outside of Brevard County, an oft-quoted but flawed trillion-dollar cost estimate is coloring public opinion on President Bush's plan to send astronauts back to the moon by 2020, and it's swaying election-year political debates. A more realistic estimate: $229 billion over the next 16 years.

In the 1983 movie, "The Right Stuff," astronaut Gordo Cooper points toward a space capsule and asks a NASA scientist, "Do you know what makes this bird go up?" Cooper answers his own question: "Funding makes this bird go up!" At which point, astronaut Gus Grissom chimes in: "No bucks? No 'Buck Rogers!'" That alleged conversation took place more than four decades ago, during the height of the space race with the Soviet Union. Today, the same refrain applies. Without funding from Congress, no U.S. spaceship will blast off for anywhere.

Overall, this should be a relatively good time for NASA. While the agency is still recovering from the Columbia accident last year and its aftermath, NASA has had its share of good news. Spirit and Opportunity, the twin Mars Exploration Rovers, are an unquestioned success, providing scientists with the strongest evidence to date that Mars once had liquid water, an essential condition for supporting life.

The prospect of sending astronauts to Mars poses scientific challenges, but just as daunting are the political and economic obstacles to fulfilling the dream of interplanetary travel. Two months after President Bush revealed his initiative to return to the moon and eventually travel to Mars, the idea is still floating in space, apparently lacking the political gravity to attract much congressional support.

I am amazed at how much money we are spending to send machines to space such as the Mars rovers. Scientists are studying a rock to see if there was once water on the planet at a cost of $820 million.

Some key lawmakers expressed reservations Wednesday about President Bush's new space mission, questioning the cost and benefits of manned travel to the moon and Mars. Leaders of the House Science Committee said they were not yet prepared to endorse a plan when there are so many unanswered questions about its price tag, affordability and impact on NASA science and aeronautics programs.

President George Bush's ambitious space exploration initiative is getting mixed reviews in Congress as lawmakers sifting through details of a NASA spending plan question how to pay for a program that could cost between $30 million and $55 billion in its initial phase.

Plans to return man to the moon, build advanced spacecraft and eventually land on Mars may be in trouble before the first spaceship blueprints are drafted, a top NASA official said during a meeting in Huntsville on Tuesday. Domestic needs and wartime spending might force Congress to delay funding for President Bush's plan to return to the moon, NASA Comptroller Steve Isakowitz told members of the NASA Advisory Council, gathered at Marshall Space Flight Center for their quarterly meeting.

The deputy administrator of NASA was in Huntsville Tuesday. He's assessing the city as a potential site for a new NASA financial center. 500 jobs are on the line. Huntsville's up against 5 other cities for NASA's 'Shared Services Center.' Governor Riley, Congressman Cramer, and local leaders met with Deputy Administrator Fred Gregory yesterday, trying to land this big fish. The center could have a 50-million dollar impact on north Alabama.

Ohio Congressman and Democratic Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich today called for a tripling of NASA's budget. Kucinich, co-sponsor of the Space Exploration Act of 2003, said the current budget for NASA "is far from adequate. Our shuttle fleet is based on 30-year old technology and this is only because of a lack of funding. Although the shuttle program requires $4 billion a year to operate, NASA has been forced to operate the shuttle with a budget of only $3 billion a year." Kucinich issued a far-reaching statement on the importance of the space program a day before he arrives in Florida Monday for two days of campaigning. Additional funding for space exploration and new technologies "is in our national interest," he said.

MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. (TSX: MDA) announced today that subsidiary, MD Robotics, has won a $1.5 million CDN ExoMars Mission contract from the European Space Agency. The prime contract is one of two parallel Phase A studies to define a robotic rover and its science payload that will be sent to the Red Planet in 2009.

EADS Space has been awarded a EUR900k study by ESA to carry out the first definition of a Rover to explore the Martian surface and search for life. The study led by EADS Astrium is part of ESA's Aurora programme that aims to one day put a European astronaut on Mars.

The president's new marching orders for NASA to leave low-Earth orbit and return to outer space exploration promises to be a bonanza for robotic missions to Mars, which not only will continue the search for clues to past life, but also pave the way for human expeditions to the Red Planet.

NASA unveiled its budget request to Congress Tuesday with the release of two companion documents: the "Fiscal Year 2005 Budget Estimates" and "The Vision for Space Exploration," a framework for exploration of the solar system and beyond.

Forget about spending much time on the moon. President Bush's $16.2 billion NASA budget proposal envisions annual lunar missions, by humans and robots, as mere steppingstones to exploring Mars and beyond. "This is not about sending humans back to the moon," NASA Comptroller Steve Isakowitz said, showing a computer-aided presentation with "Humans to the Moon" in a circle with a red slanted line through it. "The reason we're going to the moon is because we don't know today how to go to Mars," he said. "We're going to be using the moon first and foremost as a test bed to prepare the way for things we know humans could do of great value on Mars."

A trillion dollars to send astronauts to Mars? If such claims are valid, it's no wonder that the public might waver in its general support for space exploration. But despite the repeated use of this figure in the news media, the actual cost is expected to be much, much less. Engineering cost analysis that has worked in the past suggests that the actual cost of Bush's proposals will be only a fifth to a tenth as great as the frightening numbers being waved around. The slowly mounting NASA allocations, as shown on budget proposals, are in line with these estimates.

In the months preceding U.S. President George W. Bush’s decision to chart a new course for the U.S. space program, NASA -- like nearly all U.S. federal agencies -- found itself facing flat budgets “as far as they eye could see,” NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe said today. But as a result of the president’s decision to back a new vision and direction for NASA, the space agency not only avoided what would have amounted to an $11 billion cut, it also became one of the few federal agencies to secure a presidential promise of increasing funding in the years ahead.

In a presentation now being delivered to NASA employees across the country, the space agency is providing details of how it plans to implement the broad new space goals announced by President Bush last week. The presentation, a copy of which was obtained by MSNBC.com, includes a list of guiding principles, specific program plans and details of budgetary rearrangements.

U.S. President George W. Bush, speaking to reporters Tuesday in Mexico, said that his proposal for sending astronauts back to the moon and on to Mars would be affordable. A transcript of the president's remarks was posted to the White House website. During a photo opportunity with Canada’s new prime minister, Paul Martin, Bush was asked by reporters if the United States could afford a major shift in its space program. Bush said, “Yes, I’ll be saying that tomorrow.”

President Bush will seek to boost NASA’s budget by $1 billion over five years to help pay for his plan to put a base on the moon and to mount a manned expedition to Mars later in the century, a senior administration official told The Associated Press Tuesday.

A bipartisan group of about two dozen senators concerned with NASA's future last month demanded the White House articulate "a bold and coherent national mission" for the space program. The White House now appears poised to deliver, possibly announcing on Wednesday a major space initiative involving a return to the moon or even a landing on Mars.

Since last spring, the Bush administration has been conducting a confidential effort to establish a dramatic new goal for the nation's civil space program, perhaps rivaling President John F. Kennedy's call to place a U.S. astronaut on the moon before the end of the 1960s, sources told United Press International. Only a few administration insiders have been involved, with Vice President Dick Cheney heading the effort, said sources, who requested anonymity. Though some details have leaked out -- most notably reports Wednesday and Thursday that President George W. Bush will call for returning Americans to the moon -- sources insist no final decisions have been made. Instead, the president is reviewing a list of alternative goals -- some of them more practical than dramatic -- that must conform to a pair of overriding directives: Any option must be achievable within a reasonable period of time, and it must not require any major new federal spending.

President Bush has not decided on his vision for the future of human spaceflight, the White House said Thursday, shooting down reports that an announcement was imminent on plans to return to the moon and send explorers to Mars. "It would be premature to get into any speculation about our space policy," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said at his daily briefing. "It has been, and continues to be, under review. There are no plans for any policy announcements in the immediate future, and that would include any upcoming speeches."

In January voters in New Hampshire will cast ballots for the Democratic candidate they feel would best hold the office of the presidency. The eventual winner of the nationwide nomination process will face President Bush next November. Democratic candidate and former Vermont governor Howard Dean was online to take your questions Thursday, Nov. 6 at 10:15 a.m. ET on the campaign and his vision for the United States.

NASA Admin. Sean O'Keefe & CAIB Chairman Harold Gehman testify on the future of NASA before the Senate Commerce, Science & Transportation Cmte.

Congress recently initiated the Space Power Caucus after discussions with Peter Teets, the undersecretary of the Air Force, because the time is right to get the message out that space is critical to this nation's future, both on the battlefield and in industry.

The future of flight in space possesses as many question marks as there are celestial orbs to explore. Some scientists and engineers discuss colonizing Mars while others would rather concentrate on unmanned space flight, but experts do agree that it depends largely upon how much money taxpayers want to invest in the missions.

After today's House Science Committee hearing on returning the Space Shuttle to flight, U.S. Rep. Nick Lampson re-introduced his Space Exploration Act. The goals established by the Space Exploration Act of 2003 are sequenced in terms of increasing difficulty and complexity. Achieving the earlier goals will provide the capabilities needed for humans to explore other parts of the inner solar system while supporting the nation's scientific objectives.

The United States is sending two robotic probes to Mars to study the planet's surface. But whatever happened to a manned mission to the Red Planet, an idea that seemed almost a certainty a generation ago?

Presidential campaign buffs will tell you the successful candidate usually is the one with the most coherent message, the biggest bank account or the greatest physical presence. For Kingston resident and 2004 presidential aspirant Fern Penna, two out of three isn't bad. "We are taking a total approach," he said recently. "We have concrete policies to fix everything at once." These policies are largely based on a plan to turn the Unites States into a nation of space explorers. If elected, Penna promises to put a man on Mars, build spacecraft to catch meteors that could be harvested for minerals and begin mining operations on the moon.

NASA’s Space and Earth science enterprises are sowing the technological seeds for opening up new vistas on the universe and improving the understanding of the home planet. For space science, the name of the game is transit speed, power and bandwidth. In the decade ahead, NASA’s largest technology investment in the name of science is expected to be in the field of nuclear power and propulsion.

The shuttle Columbia explosion will bring needed scrutiny to the nation's space policy, lawmakers and space advocates said Saturday. "The American people have been lulled into a false sense of security by the effectiveness and diligence of our NASA team," said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, chairman of the House Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee. "The space program has been on the back burner for the last 10 years for our political leadership."

NASA’s budget request for 2004 -- finalized weeks before the launch of Columbia’s fatal mission and released without fanfare today -- seeks a $700 million increase for the space shuttle program. The increase is part of a $15.469 billion budget request NASA and the White House drew up under different assumptions than they face today. The budget represents a $469 million increase over NASA’s 2003 request and would fund several new initiatives, including efforts to send a nuclear probe to Jupiter and place a laser telecommunications satellite in orbit around Mars.

NASA is accelerating its chase of advanced nuclear power systems that could allow spacecraft to travel deeper into space faster and cheaper. NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe and other agency officials say the White House has approved a substantial budget increase for the $1 billion Nuclear Systems Initiative introduced last year. In about a week, when President Bush unveils his 2004 budget, the dollars invested in the renamed Project Prometheus will be more, though NASA won't say how much. "We are looking to significantly enhance that effort, so stay tuned," O'Keefe said. "We are looking to very specific mission objectives."

NASA has awarded the California Institute of Technology a new five-year contract to manage the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It is estimated the contract will cover more than $8 billion worth of work. The contract extends for five years the JPL agreement between Caltech and NASA for management of JPL beyond its current expiration date of Sept. 30, 2003. The NASA contract includes a new provision that, based on performance reviews, may extend the contract period of performance for up to an additional five years.

Five billion dollars is a lot of money. A line of dollar bills five billion long would reach to the moon and back. Finding that you have a $5 billion budget shortfall—as NASA, America's space agency, did last year—is therefore no mean feat. Cash crunches are nothing new at NASA, but this one is more serious. In the past, when the agency has waved its begging-bowl before American politicians, the bowl has usually been filled. This time, neither President George Bush nor Congress is interested in letting NASA spend its way out of its problems. A true crisis has finally arrived. And, a year ago, Mr Bush appointed Sean O'Keefe, a self-professed “bean-counter”, to deal with it.

The French participation in a long-term Mars-exploration program remains in doubt following budget cuts at its space agency, CNES, and pending a government review of space-spending priorities. What is clear is that CNES's Premier Mars mission, designed to include a Mars-orbiting satellite and four 18-kilogram landers to study the Martian surface and subsuface, will be substantially scaled back. The year-2007 launch date likely will slip to 2009. "We are looking for significant cost reductions to Premier, and a simplification of the mission," said Jean-Louis Counil, principal scientists for Mars exploration at CNES. "Our top priority remains the landers.

U.S. Rep. Nick Lampson (D-TX) introduced bipartisan legislation today to establish a series of goals to advance the nation’s human space flight program over the next twenty years. Among the goals specified in the bill, the eight-year goal would require the development and flight demonstration of a reusable space vehicle capable of carrying humans from low Earth orbit to libration points in space, which could be used to assemble large-scale scientific observatories far beyond low Earth orbit. The twenty-year goal would require development of a reusable vehicle to carry humans to and from Martian orbit, development of a human occupied research facility on one of the moons of Mars, and development of a reusable vehicle to carry astronauts from Martian orbit to Mars and back. The bill will allow the best, most innovative mission concepts to compete. The bill also sets tough requirements for periodic independent cost and schedule reviews to ensure that the exploration initiative is properly managed.

The United States will lose its leading role in space unless it spends more money for research and development and for recruiting young engineers, government, military and industry officials said on Tuesday. NASA and the U.S. military also needed to work more closely to make the best use of scarce resources, the officials told the 12-member Commission on the Future of the U.S. Aerospace Industry. The congressionally mandated panel, which is due to make policy recommendations to Congress and President Bush by Nov. 27, is holding a series of meetings aimed at assessing the overall health of the aerospace industry. Tidal McCoy, chairman of the Space Transportation Association, told the panel that NASA's $15.1 billion proposed budget for fiscal year 2003 was "a going-out-of-business budget for any hope of advanced space goals."

An advisory group to NASA urges the space agency to re-think its planetary exploration agenda, particularly how best to probe Europa for possible evidence of an ocean and advance Mars science investigations. The group also advises NASA to stay-the-course and fly the now-cancelled New Horizons mission to explore Pluto and Kuiper Belt objects. In a March 31 letter to NASA officials, the Solar System Exploration Subcommittee (SSES) of the Space Science Advisory Committee (SscAC) reviewed the overall health of the space agency's present and future planetary plans. The SSES membership is comprised of leading space scientists and is chaired by Michael Drake, head of the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory in Tucson. Drake authored the letter to NASA, spelling out the advisory group's views.

Americans are not enthusiastic about an ambitious space program and would cut NASA's budget before other critical national priorities, an Orlando Sentinel poll shows. The survey found little support for a long-discussed manned mission to Mars and revealed a general sentiment favoring a space program that yields practical research benefits, said Thomas Riehle, president of Ipsos-Reid U.S. Public Affairs, which conducted the national poll for the Sentinel.

A public survey conducted for NASA shows overwhelming support for Mars missions. Of the more than 54,000 people who responded to the online survey run by the Planetary Society, more than 90 percent ranked Mars exploration among the top five missions priorities. The survey results will be provided to National Research Council, which at NASA's request is preparing a set of recommendations to guide the space agency's spending on solar system exploration over the next decade.

NASA will delay deep-space missions and slash other program spending to offset a $500 million shortfall over five years caused by problems with a once-heralded contract to combine and privatize space operations. The contract combines all data collection and communications that support satellites, probes to other planets and human spaceflight. Written in 1998, the Consolidated Space Operations Contract was supposed to save NASA $1.4 billion over 10 years. But the projected savings were based on poor assumptions and overly ambitious plans, NASA managers now acknowledge. The savings didn't materialize. Making matters worse, NASA leaders spent money they thought they had saved on satellites that added to the contract's cost. As a result, all missions to Mars scheduled after 2007 may be pushed back.

The White House at 6 p.m. made official what people throughout the space community had been buzzing about all day. U.S. President George Bush intends to nominate Sean O'Keefe, the deputy director of the White House Office of Management and Budget to be the next NASA Administrator. O'Keefe has been an instrumental figure in the White House's attempts to bring the International Space Station budget under control. After determining that the program would exceed its budget by $5 billion over the next five years, OMB cut NASA's request for funding major future work on the station. The cuts included money for the construction of new crew quarters and the development of a crew rescue vehicle capable of getting seven astronauts off of the orbiting laboratory in an emergency.

NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin said today he will depart November 17 satisfied and proud that the U.S. space agency launched so many spacecraft during his tenure. "NASA is alive!" Goldin, the agency’s longest-serving administrator, said in a telephone interview. He noted that NASA had 60 spacecraft launched and planned during his tenure and said his proudest moment was the in-orbit repair of the Hubble Space Telescope. "We opened up the universe," he said. Goldin said his biggest disappointment is not going to Mars. "My life will be complete when an astronaut sets foot on Mars," Goldin said. "I want to be associated with it in some way."

NASA is expected to announce as early as October how it will deal with a newly mandated 5 percent budget cut, while rumblings of potentially deeper budget woes have begun to surface in the space community as the nation mobilizes its military in the wake of the September 11 terrorist strikes on American soil. The directive to cut the budget by 5 percent was issued by the White House on September 10. Decisions about possible cutbacks to the Mars exploration program and other cost savings may come as early as October and almost surely by the end of the year.

Nigeria is planning to spend N9 billion ($US25.4 million) over the next three years implementing the nation's National Space Policy and Programme. The initative reported by This Day was announced July 27 by the Minister of Science and Technology, Prof. Turner Isoun. Isoun said the Nigerian government had to embark on the programme in realisation of the fact that space technology reflected the power of a nation, and that Nigeria as a member of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space [COPUOS] was committed to the ideal that the exploration and use of outer space should be carried out for peaceful purposes.

An orbital test flight of a prototype crew rescue ship and technology development for human missions to Mars face cancellation as NASA continues a bid to absorb an anticipated $4 billion International Space Station cost overrun, agency officials said Friday. A slate of technology development efforts being carried out at NASA's Johnson Space Center as precursors to human expeditions to Mars also would be axed under the proposal.

Space station Alpha, increased robotic exploration and the Space Launch Initiative all will get humans to Mars faster than relatively small studies and planning, according to NASA chief Dan Goldin. In his recent justification of why human exploration studies of the Red Planet are being shut down, Goldin said the work was minor compared to the multibillion-dollar efforts the agency has undertaken. "I think this will get us to Mars faster because when you try and do too much, you do too little," Goldin said. "And getting the space station done and getting it complete and getting the assembly done, and getting the biomedical research done, is of a much higher priority than the dogs and cats of the small programs we were doing on getting ready for Mars."