Article Summary #2

Article summary #2
Recently, NASA has been undergoing quite a few changes in the way that it plans missions. These changes have been caused by the presidential agenda that has been set forth by President Barack Obama. NASA is dependent on government funding, and they really can’t do anything unless they have the funding to back it up. On Monday, President Obama held a meeting that gathered several defense contractors with the intention to create a cheaper way to shuttle astronauts back and forth from the space station. With this in mind, President Obama plans on increasing the government funding by less than 1 billion dollars which might sound like a lot, but the current funding is 18.7 billion so increasing it by less than 1 billion dollars doesn’t seem like it will do much. In spite of this little increase, President Obama plans on having a “robust 21st century space program”. The current goal of NASA is to have astronauts return to the moon by year 2020, and after this goal is reached then NASA will set its sights on reaching Mars. In order for this ambitious plan to take place, NASA estimates that a budget increase of 3 billion dollars is needed, and without the increase the trip will never take place. President Obama continues to work with his “Augustine panel”, the panel of Space Policy Experts that president Obama created to handle the nations space policy, to strike a deal between the current government funding and the funding that NASA knows it needs to get ff the ground.