NASA Washington DC<br />On January 14, 2004, President Bush put NASA on a new course into<br />the cosmos. The Vision for Space Exploration announced that<br />day focused the agency on a bold new mission: landing humans<br />on the moon before the end of the next decade, paving the way<br />for eventual journeys to Mars and beyond.<br /><br /> <img src="http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/140525main_vision_top_330.jpg" alt=" - " /><br /><br />Two years later, we're well on our way to turning the Vision into<br />reality. We've unveiled the plans for our next generation spacecraft,<br />the Crew Exploration Vehicle, which builds on the best of Apollo and<br />shuttle technology. We've returned the space shuttle fleet to flight<br />and celebrated the fifth anniversary of continuous crew operations on<br />the International Space Station.<br /><br />Human and robotic explorers will work together to reach future destinations,<br />and NASA spacecraft are already paving the way. Mars rovers Spirit<br />and Opportunity are going strong two years after landing on what was<br />to be a 90-day mission on the red planet. A new mission, the Mars<br />Reconnaissance Orbiter arrives in March. The Cassini-Huygens mission<br />is returning breathtaking images of Saturn and its moons, while space<br />telescopes like Hubble, Spitzer and Chandra probe mysteries far beyond<br />our own solar system.<br /><br />On January 15, the Stardust spacecraft returns particles from a<br />comet back to Earth. A similar mission, Deep Impact, slammed into<br />a comet on Independence Day and recorded the impact. Later this<br />month, NASA launches its latest planetary explorer, the New<br />Horizons mission to Pluto.<br /><br />These missions, like those that will follow, look to the cosmos for<br />answers to questions as old as humankind. Now, as President Bush said,<br />"let us continue the journey."