President Barack Obama ditched US plans to return to the moon in a bid to combat a record-breaking $4,794,221,842 U.S. budget deficit.
The US president pledged to increase funding for the space agency by six billion dollars over five years.
The White House said it wants to ground Constellation because it was too costly, used outdated technology, and would not be ready to ferry humans to the moon before 2028.
Mr Obama called for a halt to the Constellation Project that aims to send astronauts back to the Moon by 2020 and has already cost $9 billion.
The project was introduced by George Bush and it was supposed to restore America’s reputation as a pioneer in human exploration and expected landings on mars by 2050.
However, Mr Obama insisted that the US must reduce its costs and stop spending cash ‘like Monopoly money’ if it is ever going to bridge the growing budget gap.
‘We simply cannot continue to spend as if deficits don’t have consequences, as if waste doesn’t matter, as if the hard-earned tax dollars of the American people can be treated like Monopoly money, as if we can ignore these challenges for another generation,’ he said.
‘We won’t be able to bring down this deficit overnight,’ he added, saying the budget included boosts for education and job creation programmes.
But he said: ‘In the long term, we cannot have sustainable and durable economic growth without getting our fiscal house in order first.’
