Special report [Briefing in Depth]

E&T reports from the International Space Development Conference (ISDC) held in Chicago 27-31 May. US President Obama´s decision to cancel Nasa´s Constellation Moon/Mars programme and replace its mission-oriented architecture with a vaguer technology-development programme has sparked broad dissent among the American space community. While industry pauses to assess how best to shut down its Constellation contracts and redeploy its workforce, politicians rail against the threatened loss of jobs in their respective states. More recently, Obama has back-pedalled as far as allowing Nasa´s Orion capsule to serve as a space station ´lifeboat´, but the Agency will still be reliant on Russia´s Soyuz to launch its astronauts in the first place. And while a possible manned mission to a near-Earth asteroid has been mentioned, the specific target, spacecraft and launch vehicle hardware and budget required remain undecided.