President salutes Apollo 11 astronauts

NASA's next step for exploration remains unclear

President Barack Obama hosted (from left) Apollo 11 astronauts Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, Michael 
Collins and Neil Armstrong yesterday in the Oval Office at the White House. (Getty Images)
President Barack Obama hosted (from left) Apollo 11 astronauts Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, Michael Collins and Neil Armstrong yesterday in the Oval Office at the White House. (Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The same question that could have been asked 40 years ago moments after Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon is still being asked today: Now what?

On the 40th anniversary of man's first moon landing, the Apollo 11 crew met with President Barack Obama, who used the opportunity to talk about inspiration and science and math education. He didn't talk about going anywhere in space, not the moon or Mars.

Obama said he wanted to use yesterday's anniversary of the Apollo moon landing to show that “math and science are cool again.”

“The touchstone for excellence in exploration and discovery is always going to be represented by the men of Apollo 11,” Obama said. He said their work sparked “innovation, the drive, the entrepreneurship, the creativity back here on Earth.”

That's not what the men who went to the moon had in mind.

Earlier in the day, seven Apollo astronauts, including Apollo 11's Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, used a news conference to talk about their desire to go to Mars and not linger on the moon as long as NASA plans.

“All of us here are pretty much convinced that Mars is a goal to shoot for,” said Tom Stafford, commander of Apollo 10, which orbited the moon and tested the lunar module.

On a day when everyone lauded NASA for landing on the moon and dreaming big, the space agency's overall plan for future exploration remained in a holding pattern. Again.

The Obama administration is waiting for a recommendation from an outside panel, which will examine a return-to-the-moon policy that started under President George W. Bush and compare that to other goals and different spaceship designs.

With NASA's new boss Charles Bolden Jr. and its biggest stars — Armstrong, Aldrin and Apollo 11 crewmate Michael Collins — shaking Obama's hand in the Oval Office, it was an opportunity to chart a new course to somewhere.

That's not what happened.

The U.S. space program is full of goals attached to dates. President John F. Kennedy wanted to land a man on the moon by the end of the decade. Five years ago, Bush said he wanted to land astronauts back on the moon by 2020. So with Armstrong standing next to him and nodding, Obama said those magic words: “Keep the goal by 2020.”

But he wasn't finished. “Keep the goal by 2020 of having the highest college graduation rates of any country on Earth, especially in the math and science fields.”

It was not about going somewhere old or new. It wasn't about NASA. It was about education.

The Obama administration isn't quite ready to make long-term commitments to space exploration, said John Logsdon, former George Washington University space policy director.

Meanwhile, the astronauts aboard the shuttle-station complex celebrated the anniversary with their own spacewalk Monday, heading outside to stockpile some big spare parts.

In the second outing of their mission, David Wolf and Thomas Marshburn anchored a 6-foot dish antenna on the international space station for future use, then did the same with a hefty pump and an engine for a rail car. Equally important, the $15.6 million space station toilet that broke down Sunday was functioning again after the crew added new parts. It was out of action for 24 hours.



