The timeline envisaged by Nasa means routine Orion trips to the International Space Station (ISS) to exchange crews are unlikely to occur before 2016.
The latest NASA plan retains Orion, but at reduced funding levels.
The Space Launch System, or SLS for short, is NASA's go-to rocket to carry NASA's planned Orion capsule and possibly other future payloads beyond low-Earth orbit.
MSN: Giant deep-space rocket passes key test - Technology & science - Space - Space.com | NBC News
The Operations and Checkout building will soon serve as the final assembly facility for the Orion capsule during NASA's next phase of space exploration, the Constellation program.
The exploration of NEOs would be useful for NASA in the development of its Orion spacecraft that is being developed for its lunar missions.
"This is the successful culmination of all of the design trade studies and activities to date, " said Mark Geyer, manager of the Orion Project Office at Nasa's Johnson Space Center in Houston.
That would come when NASA redesigned its spacesuit for the first mission of the Orion capsule scheduled to fly to the space station in 2014.
Likewise in the Senate, some veteran GOP lawmakers have spearheaded the fight to retain NASA's umbrella manned program, dubbed Constellation, which includes Orion as a major element.
Nasa is due to retire its space shuttles next year and replace them with the Orion spacecraft, an Apollo-like capsule that would launch on a new rocket called Ares 1.
Meanwhile, NASA is developing a huge rocket called the Space Launch System and a capsule known as Orion to carry astronauts to a near-Earth asteroid by 2025 and the vicinity of Mars by the mid-2030s goals laid out by Obama in 2010.
MSN: Romney pledges to keep US the leader in space exploration
While NASA works with U.S. industry partners to develop these capabilities, the agency also is developing the Orion spacecraft and the Space Launch System (SLS), a crew capsule and heavy-lift rocket to provide an entirely new capability for human exploration.
ENGADGET: NASA awards Boeing, SpaceX and Sierra Nevada $30 million in contracts
Science editor Alan Boyle's blog: NASA and the European Space Agency have signed an agreement calling for the Europeans to provide the service module for the Orion space capsule, the U.S. space agency's crew vehicle for exploration beyond Earth orbit.
MSN: Mars rover survives 'brain transplant' with flying colors
应用推荐