spacetoday.net: Reports: White House to increase NASA budget, cancel Ares

Posted: Thu, Jan 28, 2010, 7:42 AM ET (1242 GMT)
Ares 1 launch illustration (NASA)

After weeks of rumors of substantial changes to NASA's future space exploration programs, White House and NASA officials said late Wednesday that the agency's budget would be increase but that a number of existing programs would be altered or canceled. Officials told the newspapers Florida Today and Orlando Sentinel that NASA's budget would be increased by an average of $1.3 billion a year for the next five years. Some of that additional funding would be used to extend the ISS to 2020, and also go towards a $6-billion program to develop commercial crew transportation systems to ferry astronauts to and from the ISS. However, the currently planned Ares 1 and Ares 5 rockets would be canceled, with some funding set aside for research and development for human missions beyond low Earth orbit. More details are expected when the White House releases its fiscal year 2011 budget proposal on Monday.