ents remember when Neil Armstrong took those first steps on the moon in 1969.  Since then, eleven more Americans have trekked the lunar surface, but the last visit was in 1972.  Due to President Obama’s budget cuts, it looks like the record is going to stay that way.  These cuts will now cancel the Constellation program NASA was planning on executing, which would have placed Americans on the moon yet again by the year 2020.  Several other projects of NASA’s will also be downsized or replaced in the coming months.
In addition to reducing NASA’s budget, President Obama is planning on turning the focus of NASA’s engineers to climate-change, robotic probes, and developing technologies that would support a human expedition to Mars.  It has been proposed that the Constellation program be replaced by commercial space rockets as well.  The Ares I rocket that would have ferried humans to space will disappear along with the Ares V cargo rocket.  Any solar system exploration will be decades away in the future.
Ares I of the Constellation project has a shaky fate that is currently being disputed over in Congress.  Over eight billion dollars has already been spent on the entire Constellation program, and three billion of that went to the design of the Ares I rocket ship.  Although commercial companies stand to make huge profits from sending people into orbit, it remains to be seen whether proper funding can be provided before the project is a bust.
Although many are upset about the impending cancellation of Constellation, others are wondering why America would even want to send someone else to the moon.  A popular opinion is that we have sent several astronauts to the moon already and should be focusing our sights on Mars or deeper solar system exploration.  Still others think that all space ventures for the immediate future should be downsized in favor of focusing on issues closer to home, such as global warming and fixing the economy.  For now, whatever happens with NASA is left to Congress.