Constellation program

The Constellation program, abbreviated CxP, was a crewed spaceflight program developed by NASA, the space agency of the United States, from 2005 to 2009. No crewed missions flew before its cancellation. Its major goals were the completion of the International Space Station and a return to the Moon no later than 2020, with a crewed flight to Mars as the ultimate goal, and its technological aims included regaining significant astronaut experience beyond low Earth orbit and developing the technologies needed for a sustained human presence on other planetary bodies. The program grew out of the Vision for Space Exploration set out under NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe and President George W. Bush. His successor Michael D. Griffin ordered the Exploration Systems Architecture Study, whose findings were formalized by the NASA Authorization Act of 2005. After the Augustine Committee found in 2009 that the program could not be executed without substantial increases in funding, President Barack Obama proposed in February 2010 to cancel it, and the NASA Authorization Act of 2010 shelved it. In 2011 NASA adopted the design of its new Space Launch System.