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THE US risks losing its edge in human space exploration and faces the humbling prospect of relying on outsiders to put its astronauts into space. Battles are brewing over the direction the agency should take, and decisions made in the next few months may shape US spaceflight for decades to come. So where does NASA’s future lie?

In July NASA will celebrate the 40th anniversary of humanity’s first steps on the moon. But 2009 sees confusion over the agency’s next “giant leaps”, and its planned return to the moon is in the balance: the space shuttle fleet is set to retire in 2010, although the shuttles’ troubled successor will not be ready until 2015 at the earliest and many space commentators, and even some NASA employees, want to scrap it and start over. Despite safety concerns, there are calls to extend the shuttle’s life rather than hitch rides with countries such as Russia. Other groups are pushing instead for NASA to start paying for their astronauts to travel on commercial spacecraft.

The entire future of US crewed space flight is in question but events are coming to a head: a new NASA boss is to be appointed, possibly in the next month, there are highly anticipated rocket flight tests later this year, and a tightening of purse strings is set to force some difficult decisions.

The stakes could not be higher, says Howard McCurdy, a space-policy analyst at the American University in Washington DC. NASA can no longer afford the spiralling costs associated with expensive disappointments like the space shuttle, which added up to many billions more than planned, he says. “It will kill the human space flight programme.”

NASA’s latest travails began with the 2003 accident that destroyed space shuttle Columbia and killed its crew. The government directed the agency to begin work on a new space launch vehicle, retire the space shuttle fleet by 2010 and return astronauts to the moon by 2020. Since then, NASA has been developing the Ares I rocket and Orion crew capsule, which it wants to use to carry its astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) and to help them fly to the moon. However, the programme has faced serious technical problems. Ares I suffers from potentially dangerous vibrations, and engineers have struggled to squeeze enough power from the rocket to lift the heavy Orion capsule into orbit.

The programme’s fate might be decided in August. That’s when NASA plans to launch a prototype called Ares I-X from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Ares I-X is a modified version of the Ares I rocket, with a functional first stage capped by a dummy second stage and dummy capsule. It will test the rocket’s aerodynamics and separation of the first and second stages.

“If it’s not a successful flight, it’s only going to increase the calls to revisit or even cancel the programme,” says space industry analyst Jeff Foust, editor of . “If it succeeds, it’s only one hurdle of many that the programme’s going to have to overcome.”

President Barack Obama endorsed the shuttle’s retirement and a return to the moon by 2020 in his proposed budget for 2010, but has so far taken no specific position on Ares I and Orion. If he did throw his weight behind the programme, extra money would have to be found. Keeping Ares I and the rest of NASA’s human space-flight hardware development on schedule in the coming years is likely to require a $2 billion per year boost to NASA’s budget, according to a report issued last week by the . Yet it is not clear that Congress would be willing to pay up. In other words, with the status quo, NASA simply cannot afford to stay on track – something’s got to give.

“With the status quo, NASA simply cannot afford to stay on track – something has got to give”

The agency may have to sacrifice its involvement in the ISS (see “This station terminates here”). To find even more money, it could relax its 2020 deadline for the return to the moon. However, deferral could lead to cancellation, McCurdy warns. “As soon as you loosen the 2020 deadline, you basically say we’ll do it someday but we don’t know when,” he says. “It is really a retreat and would cause substantial reconsideration of the overall concept.”

Foust reckons NASA should explore commercial options for launching its astronauts, and he’s not alone: an advocacy group called the is also pushing for this. A leading contender to provide such flights is a company called , founded in 2002 by the co-founder of Paypal, Elon Musk, and based in Hawthorne, California. SpaceX has developed a capsule called Dragon that could carry up to seven astronauts into Earth orbit, launched by the company’s Falcon 9 rocket.

Launching astronauts on a commercial vehicle would be unprecedented, but not far-fetched: NASA has already contracted SpaceX to take cargo to the ISS on unpiloted flights of its Falcon 9 and Dragon system, beginning in 2010, although SpaceX will need to carry out successful demonstration flights by then. The first test flight of Falcon 9 is expected early in the second half of 2009, followed by a second test flight, this time carrying the Dragon capsule, before the end of the year.

“There’s nothing like successful flights – that’s the ultimate proof of your approach,” says Valin Thorn, deputy manager of NASA’s commercial crew and cargo programme, which has provided millions of dollars to assist SpaceX with its development work. “At the same time, we know how difficult this is, and it’s not unusual historically to have early failures in a development programme. We have tolerance for a degree of that.”

Another factor that could affect the future of US space flight is a possible delay in retiring the space shuttle. Congressional representatives from Florida are particularly keen on this idea because it avoids or delays job losses that would result from the retirement of the shuttle. But the billions of dollars required per year could come at the expense of delayed development of Ares I, and could also make it harder to find money to assist companies like SpaceX in developing commercial launch options.

One thing weighing against extending the shuttles’ life is a by a panel of independent experts that advises NASA on safety. The panel strenuously objected to the idea of extending the space shuttles’ life, given ongoing concerns about the ageing vehicles’ safety.

The uncertainty over NASA’s future is deepened by the absence of a permanent chief. The previous administrator, Mike Griffin, resigned in January, but the Obama administration has yet to name a permanent replacement. Obama’s science adviser, John Holdren, said in early April he hoped the announcement would be made within a month. Even so, the big decisions like those now facing the agency cannot be decided by the new administrator alone – not least because they involve colossal sums of money.

Arguably, the US contribution to human spaceflight is too fundamental to neglect now. After all, Thorn argues that sending astronauts to space is part of a long-term international insurance plan for the human species. “Humanity’s survival could depend on developing human space transportation well beyond what we have today, and that’s a multi-generational endeavour,” he says. “We have to continue to press those boundaries.”