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As part of a sweeping post-shuttle change of direction for NASA, the Obama administration's shift to private-sector rockets and spacecraft will include government development of a new heavy-lift rocket for eventual manned flights to a variety of deep space targets including, ultimately, Mars, an administration official said Tuesday.

While committed to terminating the Bush administration's Constellation moon program, the president supports development of a scaled-down version of Constellation's Orion crew capsule for use as a space station emergency escape vehicle and possible technology test bed.

Speaking on background, a senior administration official said Tuesday the Orion capsule could be launched unmanned to the International Space Station using commercial rockets as part of a broad effort to reduce reliance on Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

The official said the use of a scaled-down version of Orion, along with the development of new private-sector rockets and capsules to replace the shuttle, would end NASA's reliance on Russia for space transportation services sooner than would have been possible with the Constellation program's Ares rockets.

The president will discuss his new strategy for NASA during a conference at the Kennedy Space Center on Thursday, outlining a series of robotic and eventual manned deep-space missions that will build in an evolutionary, step-by-step approach to eventual flights to Mars, the official said.

While no timetable for such flights will be specified, a decision on what sort of heavy lift rocket architecture to pursue will be made in 2015, based in part on advanced technologies research that will be funded at more than $3 billion over the next five years.

As previously announced, the administration's plan for NASA includes an additional $6 billion over the next five years to fund a variety of technology and infrastructure development efforts that by 2012 will result, the administration official said, in 2,500 more jobs at the Kennedy Space Center than would have been expected under Constellation.
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