After President Obama gave his approval to send astronauts to near-Earth asteroid by 2025, and then to the surroundings of Mars by mid 2030's, NASA plans on implementing its desire to send astronauts back to the moon's neighborhood with Obama's approval.
John Logsdon, space policy expert and professor emeritus at George Washington University, said the new plan was approved by the Obama Administration but was kept low till the elections were over in case Mitt Romney won the presidential election.
"They've been holding off announcing that until after the election," Logsdon said, noting that Romney pledged to reassess and possibly revise NASA's missions and direction.
NASA planned to have a space craft parked at the Earth-moon L2 gateway which is a point in the space between two bodies' gravitational pull allowing a spacecraft to park there.
"NASA has been evolving its thinking, and its latest charts have inserted a new element of cislunar/lunar gateway/Earth-moon L2 sort of stuff into the plan," Logsdon told SPACE.com.
It's also very essential that the missions be carried off without exceeding the proposed 2013 federal budget which is $17.7 billion.
"They're not talking about plans that imply significant budget increases," Logsdon said. "It gives a more focused use for SLS and Orion before an asteroid mission."
Earth-moon L2 needs to be studied in depth before carrying out the operation and hence it is estimated to start off as early as 2021 along with the first manned flight of SLS and Orion.
"I'm not privy to the specifics of this, but one could conceive of the second SLS mission being the start of activity in cislunar space, rather than just being a lunar orbit mission," Logsdon said.
NASA deputy chief Lori Garver said at a conference in September about going to the Moon and Mars and to be the first one ever to step on an asteroid.
"We just recently delivered a comprehensive report to Congress outlining our destinations which makes clear that SLS will go way beyond low-Earth orbit to explore the expansive space around the Earth-moon system, near-Earth asteroids, the moon, and ultimately, Mars," he said. "Let me say that again: We're going back to the moon, attempting a first-ever mission to send humans to an asteroid and actively developing a plan to take Americans to Mars."
