U.S. President Barack Obama is not expected to significantly boost the projected funding profile for NASA's manned spaceflight program in the next few years, despite warnings from a blue-ribbon panel that the U.S. space agency needs between $3 billion and $4 billion more annually to send astronauts back to the Moon, according to sources with ties to the administration.rnInstead, White House and NASA officials are scrubbing NASA's 2010 budget proposal, and the assumptions made by the blue-ribbon panel it underpins, for potential cost savings over the next decade that could help fund some means of send-ing astronauts beyond low Earth orbit as soon as 2020. One possibility being weighed by the administration is abandoning the idea of astronaut landings on the Moon in favor of missions that would take astronauts on close flybys of heavenly bodies such as asteroids.
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