Obama scraps NASA's Moon mission

Scrapping NASA's"Back to Moon" project, US President Barack Obama gave a new mission to the country's civilian space programme agency-a manned mission to Mars in a decade and sending astronauts to explore asteroids beyond the moon by 2025.

In his major speech on NASA, at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida, Obama announced to increase its budget by US $ 6 billion in the next five years. "By doing that we will ramp up robotic exploration of the solar system, including a probe of the Sun's atmosphere; new scouting missions to Mars and other destinations; and an advanced telescope to follow Hubble, allowing us to peer deeper into the universe than ever before," he said.

"Early in the next decade, a set of crewed flights will test and prove the systems required for exploration beyond low Earth orbit. And by 2025, we expect new spacecraft designed for long journeys to allow us to begin the first-ever crewed missions beyond the Moon into deep space," Obama said."We'll start by sending astronauts to an asteroid for the first time in history. By the mid-2030s, I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to Earth. And a landing on Mars will follow.  And I expect to be around to see it," he added.

"Critical to deep space exploration will be the development of breakthrough propulsion systems and other advanced technologies. So I'm challenging NASA to break through these barriers. We'll give you the resources to break through these barriers. I know you will, with ingenuity and intensity, because that's what you've always done," Obama said.

Justifying his decision to scrap the Moon project, Obama said: "I understand that some believe that we should attempt a return to the surface of the Moon first, as previously planned. But I just have to say pretty bluntly here: We've been there before. Buzz has been there. 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."

Obama said 50 years after the creation of NASA, the goal is no longer just a destination to reach. "Our goal is the capacity for people to work and learn and operate and live safely beyond the Earth for extended periods of time, ultimately in ways that are more sustainable and even indefinite" he said.

The US President said the challenges facing the space programme are different and US imperatives for this programme are different, than in decades past". We're no longer racing against an adversary. We're no longer competing to achieve a singular goal like reaching the Moon. In fact, what was once a global competition has long since become a global collaboration," he asserted.