NASA Administrator Charles Bolden will unveil the U.S. space agency’s spending priorities for 2011 during a Feb. 1 announcement at NASA headquarters here, according to administration officials.
President Barack Obama’s 2011 budget request is expected to realign NASA’s human spaceflight activities and investments to foster development of commercial systems capable of ferrying astronauts to the International Space Station. The request is not expected to include a much-sought after billion-dollar boost to aid NASA’s funding-hampered human spaceflight efforts.
NASA currently plans to retire its three aging space shuttles this year after five more missions. But plans to use the shuttle fleet’s replacement – NASA’s new Ares rockets and their Orion crew vehicles – for an eventual return to the moon are still in flux.