Nasa experts scale back moon and Mars plans in face of Obama funding cut fears

US space experts are downsizing plans to send astronauts back to the moon and possibly to Mars amid fears of funding cuts by the Obama administration.

Sceptics believe that Nasa is worried that its moon plan may prove too expensive for Washington Photo: AFP

Forty years after astronauts first walked on the moon, Nasa, the US space agency, is officially committed to a $35 billion (£22 billion) plan instituted by President George W. Bush to build the first of a new generation of manned rockets that can return to the planet by 2020.

However, the new president has appointed an independent panel to review America's costly manned space programme, called Constellation, and make recommendations by the end of August.

With Nasa engineers now floating cut-rate rocket alternatives, some politicians and former astronauts fear that the 2020 deadline will be foiled by financial constraints.

Noting a space exploration budget of six billion dollars in 2009, Senator Bill Nelson of Florida said: "Nasa simply can't do the job it's been given - the president's goal of being on the moon by 2020."

Mr Nelson, a former astronaut, bemoaned the fact that, between 2010 and 2015, the US will have no way of transporting its astronauts to the International Space Station except aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

Michael Griffin, a former Nasa chief who championed the Constellation programme, warned that America had concentrated for too long on space shuttles – which are being retired - while rivals, such as China, were emerging with more ambitious goals.

"I think we must return to the moon because it's the next step. It's a few days from home. Mars is only a few months from Earth," he said.

Developers of Ares I, the first rocket in the Constellation project, reject claims that costs have spiralled out of control.

However, Constellation has been projected to cost around $150 billion, including the development of the Orion capsule and the Ares launchers needed to put it into orbit.

Sceptics believe that Nasa is worried that its moon plan may prove too expensive for Washington.

They point out that John Shannon, Nasa's shuttle programme manager, has now proposed a cheaper, $6.6 billion alternative that would use the old shuttle propulsion system.

But the Shannon plan, dubbed the Shuttled-Derived Heavy Lift Launch Vehicle, would only be able to carry two astronauts at a time. According to its creator, this might limit the size of any base on the moon.

Meanwhile, a group of rebel Nasa engineers have put forward their own rival family of rockets called Jupiter.

Jupiter would, at an estimated $14 billion, also be substantially cheaper than the NASA project and would also use existing shuttle technology.

Norman Augustine, a former Lockheed Martin chief executive who chairs the panel reviewing the programme's cost, admitted it all comes down to money.

"With a few exceptions, we have the technology or the knowledge that we could go to Mars if we wanted with humans. We could put a telescope on the moon if we wanted," he said.

"The technology is by and large there. It boils down to what can we afford?"

By Tom Leonard in New York