The US space agency NASA has abandoned its plans to fly any new spaceship by 2013. Earlier, NASA had vision that it will fly astronauts to the International Space Station aboard a new spaceship called Orion as early as September 2013. The decision has come for lack of funding. The expected funding has not been granted by US Congress which NASA had hoped.

 

However, NASA hopes that it would be able to fly an Orion crew to the International Space Station by September 2014, which accordingly is well before its earliest deadline of March 2015. Program manager Jeff Hanley at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston said that the window of opportunity for them to accelerate Orion has closed.

 

Noteworthy point is that US will be without means to transport people to and from space after the shuttle fleet is retired in 2010. And, in that case it would have to depend on Russia to ferry crews to the space station. Also, there would be a greater dependency on private companies to deliver cargo during the gap between NASA spaceship launch and retirement of existing ship in 2010.