The White House has been pondering what to do with NASA ever since an expert panel delivered a report full of options last fall. The NASA budget for fiscal year 2011 would give the $18.7 billion space agency a substantial financial boost — an additional $6 billion over five years — while dramatically changing the direction of future human exploration. The budget would kill the Constellation program, the successor to the nearly 30-year-old space shuttle program, which is due to be retired after just five more flights. Instead, the budget would fund NASA to contract with private industry to provide astronaut transportation to the international space station as soon as possible. Read more budget analysis regarding space exploration.
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