Barack Obama today unveils sweeping changes to the structure of the US space programme. Perhaps the most dramatic of these is that the anticipated manned missions to the Moon, scheduled for the end of the decade, will no longer go ahead.

The revised programme is set to focus more on low-Earth orbit programmes and a five-year extension to capital funding for the International Space Station. Obama’s administration clearly see this as having more significant long-term opportunity than a return to the Moon; the last manned Moon landing occurred in December 1972 and there now appears to be little hope of a US-led return to the suface in the foreseeable future.

Obama’s administration are aiming to widen the future of space exploration by increasing opportunities to the commercial sector. That group would be given the chance to develop launch vehicles and have a greater say in the direction of the US space programme, which to date has very much come under the governance of NASA.

The Russian Space Agency is believed to retain interest in sending cosmonauts to the Moon within the next 20 years, whilst India and China have crash-landed probes onto the lunar surface in recent history – perhaps we will finally see non-US space explorers walking on the Moon in our lifetimes?

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