In February 2010, the Obama Administration proposed cancelling the Constellation spacecraft development program intended to replace the abandoned space shuttle program. NASA would instead rely on commercial providers to transport crews into low Earth orbit and would reorient its own research goals toward exploration of Mars, with the intermediate goal of asteroid exploration, rather than expending resources to send American astronauts back to the Moon. To that end, this year’s NASA budget proposal submitted by the Administration to Congress for the Fiscal Year 2012 requests 31 percent less funding for manned spaceflight than mandated by the NASA Authorization Act of 2010. This has caused concern for some Members of Congress, who have argued that the future of our space program is in serious jeopardy. On Monday of this week, the space shuttle Endeavour began its last trip to the International Space Station, effectively marking the beginning of the end of America’s space shuttle program that is set to officially conclude with the launch of the space shuttle Atlantis in early July.