Yesterday the Obama administration announced it's 2010 budget for NASA, which scraps plans to return to the moon by 2020 and focuses on using commercial companies to ferry astronauts into orbit. NASA has wasted no time in pushing ahead with this plan, awarding $50 million to five different companies for the development of concepts and technology for human spaceflight.

The money was awarded through an open competition for funds from the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009. Blue Origin, based in Kent, WA, will receive $3.7 million; the Boeing Company of Houston will receive $18 million; Paragon Space Development Corporation of Tucson, AZ, will receive $1.4 million; Sierra Nevada Corporation, based in Louisville, CO, will receive $20 million; and United Launch Alliance of Centennial, CO, will received $6.7 million.

The awards are the first step in NASA's investment in commercial human spaceflight. In 2008 the agency awarded Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) a $1.6 billion contract to provide a launch vehicle capable of reaching the space station. The contract was for a cargo-carrying spacecraft, with an option of developing a version for crew.

The White House's initial budget proposal has allocated $500 million in 2011 financial year for commercial crew concepts, and $312 million for commercial cargo development. In the 2012 financial year commercial crew expenditure is expected to increase to $1.4 billion.

President Obama is set to announce his 2011 budget on Monday, February 1, and reports accross the Web suggest it won't be good news for NASA.

According to CBS News and the Los Angeles Times, sources in the White House have said that the president's budget will not allocate the money needed for NASA to return humans to the moon as outlined in the agency's Constellation program.

Instead, according to these unnamed insiders, the White House wants to concentrate on Earth-science projects like climate change research and the development of new technology--possibly a heavy-lift rocket--that could someday enable human exploration of asteroids and the inner solar system. Reportedly, the White House also wants to invest money in commercial companies for spacecraft that can ferry astronauts to the International Space Station, which is expected to remain in Orbit until at least 2020.

Many of these ideas were raised in final report of the Augustine Panel, a committee commissioned to review NASA's Constellation program. The panel's report suggested that the White House should abandon the development of Ares I, NASA's next rocket to carry crew, and should rely instead on the commercial sector. It also outlined plans that would skip the moon, and send robotic missions to Mars or Lagrange points.

The Augustine Panel said that an additional $3 billion a year was required for a "worthy" human spaceflight program. There is speculation that NASA will get less than $1 billion. However, the Obama administration still has to get its budget through Congress, and it could face opposition there.

Meanwhile, the New York Times is reporting that NASA is preparing a technical evaluation of its human spaceflight program, which would "survey all the available rockets and spacecraft, consider different strategies for reaching future destinations and recommend a framework on how to proceed." But the study will not be conducted until NASA's budget has been determined.

According to the NYT, the administration might also turn to other nations to aid in space exploration, perhaps giving the European Space Agency the job of building a lunar lander. Michael Griffin, former NASA administrator, told the NYT that would be a mistake. "I can't imagine the situation where the United States doesn't want to have end-to-end capability to reach the lunar surface," he said.

In the next couple weeks the Obama administration will make a decision on the future of U.S. human spaceflight. Now, the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP), an independent panel that has been evaluating NASA's safety performance and advising the agency since 1968, has published its annual report, which questions the safety of using commercial launch vehicles to put astronauts in space.

In 2009, an independent committee, the Augustine Panel, was commissioned to review the current U.S. human spaceflight program and to provide recommendations to the administration. The panel's final report implied that NASA should abandon its new rocket, Ares I, which is being built to ferry astronauts into orbit after the space shuttles retire. Instead, the panel said NASA should rely on the commercial sector to carry both crew and cargo into low Earth orbit.

ASAP states that NASA's program for the development of commercial systems, called Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS), is absent of a human-rating process. So far, the agency has only awarded contracts to two companies, SpaceX and Orbital Sciences, for the development of systems to carry cargo. ASAP is also concerned about NASA's lack of assessing the safety of these systems.

According to the ASAP report, "switching from a well-designed, safety-optimized system to commercially-developed vehicles based on nothing more than unsubstantiated claims would seem a poor choice. Before any change is made to another architecture, the inherent safety of that approach must be assessed to ensure that it offers a level of safety equal to or greater than the program of record."