To observers on Earth, the moon goes through phases, waxing and waning over the course of about 30 days. The moon also waxes and wanes, albeit on far longer cycles, when it comes to space policy. At the beginning of the decade the moon was waning in importance. The Obama administration sought to cancel the Constellation program, which planned to return humans to the moon by 2020. "I just have to say pretty bluntly here: we've been there before," President Barack Obama said of the moon in an April 2010 speech at the Kennedy Space Center explaining his administration's new human spaceflight policy.
展开▼
