Constellation Program

The Constellation Program (abbreviated CxP) was a human spaceflight program within NASA, the space agency of the United States. The stated goals of the program were to gain significant experience in operating away from Earth's environment, develop technologies needed for opening the space frontier, and conducting fundamental science.

Constellation began in response to the goals laid out in the Vision for Space Exploration under NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe. It had already begun development, under several proposals. After Sean O'Keefe's retirement, his replacement Michael D. Griffin ordered a complete review, termed the Exploration Systems Architecture Study, which reshaped how NASA would pursue the goals laid out in the Vision for Space Exploration. With the NASA Authorization Act of 2005 formalizing the findings of the Exploration Systems Architecture Study, work began on this revised Constellation Program to send astronauts first to the International Space Station, then to the Moon, and afterward to Mars and other destinations beyond.

Subsequent to the findings of the Augustine Committee that the Constellation Program could not be executed without very substantial increases in funding, on February 1, 2010, President Barack Obama announced a proposal to cancel the program, effective with the U.S. 2011 fiscal year budget, but later announced changes to the proposal in a major space policy speech at Kennedy Space Center on April 15, 2010. Obama signed the NASA Authorization Act of 2010 on October 11 which brought the program to an end despite promises to fully fund space flight during his Presidential campaign in 2008, but Constellation contracts remain in place until Congress acts to overturn the previous mandate. The program has been replaced by the U.S. National Space Policy of the Barack Obama administration. NASA announced that it had selected the design of the Space Launch System in September 2011.