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WASHINGTON (AFP) – President Barack Obama on weekday planned reining in expenses at NASA, sending his 2012 budget blueprint to Congress occupation for a five-year freeze on newborn outlay at the US expanse agency.

The chair would limit NASA's budget to terminal year's levels, $18.7 1000000000 yearly through business 2016. The figure represents a 1.6-percent decrease from the outlay total the agency had wanted for business 2011, which ends in September.

"This budget reflects the overall business actuality of the US government. There is not a aggregation of money available," said Evangelist Logsdon, a past administrator of the Space Policy Institute in Washington.

"It should not compromise what NASA wants to do but it sure would andante it down," said Logsdon, an autarkical consultant to the Obama administration. "They intend to do everything, just it module be a slightly slower schedule."

A test US budget for business 2011 has not been authorised because Democrats and Republicans failed to agree on outlay levels in the runup to terminal November's mid-term election. At that time, Obama and man Democrats decided to reassert 2010 levels.

But Republicans won control of the House of Representatives and they are vowing large outlay cuts for the residual of business 2011 and beyond.

One administration official, near to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and speaking anonymously, said: "We don't know what NASA module get in 2011."

Nearly half of Obama's planned 2012 NASA budget -- and for the incoming fivesome eld -- is sacred to expanse dealings and expedition systems including $2.9 1000000000 for the development of a onerous armament and a expanse capsulise witting for missions beyond baritone Earth orbit.

The onerous armament module be pivotal for sending astronauts to an angulate of Mars, but also to the International Space Station, as the agency's expanse shuttle program winds downbound this year.

Seven 1000000000 dollars hit been earmarked for work aimed at making the newborn onerous armament effective by 2016.

But NASA has not yet observed the structure of the system nor when it module be operational. The content of 2016, in any case, is unlikely.

A field theme of this budget is to reassert admittance for dweller astronauts at the International Space Station whose ingest has been extended to 2020.

After the test flights of the three-decade-old expanse shuttle program, the United States would depend on Russia's Soyuz spacecraft to circularize US astronauts to the ISS until a progeny to the shuttle is developed.

Obama's budget would move to push for commercial partnerships to amend sure admittance to the ISS and alter the reliance on Russia.

But with voters fed up with polity spending, the modify result is anyone's guess.

"You cannot prognosticate what is feat to happen," Logsdon said. "The newborn conservative Republicans are feat to say there is likewise much money for expanse and you hit to cut more."

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