Obama to hold conference to discuss NASA’s future

Reportedly, the president with his team of top officials along with space leaders will "focus on the goals and strategies in this new vision, the next steps, and the new technologies, new jobs, and new industries it will create."

Though, the full details about the conference, scheduled for April 15, are yet to be announced officially.

"After years of underinvestment in new technology and unrealistic budgeting, the President's plan will unveil an ambitious plan for NASA that sets the agency on a reinvigorated path of space exploration," the White House statement said.

Budget plan for NASA
Currently, Obama's budget plan supports private spaceships and inventing new rocket technology. However, Obama wants NASA to focus in the direction of producing new technologies to prepare for human missions to other destination in space.

The amount proposed in the budget is around $6 billion over five years, to allow commercial companies to produce space craft’s capable of taking astronauts’ to space and to continue work on the International Space Station.

The current fleet of space ships will be retiring by the end of 2010 and from then on U.S. astronauts will have to rely on other countries space craft’s to take them into orbit.

According to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, when the NASA’s shuttle program will end later in the year, the nation will rely on its aerospace contractors to fill the gap.

Bolden along with John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, believe that a little change in strategy will be good for NASA.

"We must invest in fundamentally new innovations for space technology and new ways of doing business if we are to develop a space exploration program that is truly sustainable over the long term," said Bolden.

Bolden's statement had come when speculations were rife that Obama might do away with NASA's $100 billion plans to return astronauts to the moon.

Constellation project likely to be scrapped
It is expected that the president will confirm his plans to drop the NASA Constellation project to continue research in the direction to benefit from long term space interests.

As per James Muncy, a space policy consultant and a co-founder of Washington D.C.-based Space Frontier foundation, "I think he's going to articulate why his new plan is better for exploration and why it's better for Florida than the old plan. I think a lot of people have asked 'Why doesn't he come out and say why he has proposed this budget?' and I think that's what he would be doing."