In next weeks edition of the respected trade publication, Aviation Week and Space Technology, the White House is calling for "sweeping changes" at NASA. An early piece of the space agenda is to scrap the space shuttle moving toward use of a new modular space vehicle for a return to the Moon in 9-12 years, the magazine explains.

The lunar hardware is geared to help astronauts "practice for an eventual landing on Mars," the magazine explains.

"The White House Office of Management and Budget has already plugged in an extra $800 million to NASAs Fiscal 2005 budget request to fund early work on the project," Aviation Week reports. Bush is expected to outline the new space agenda in an upcoming Wednesday address.The initiative would drive NASAs budget up 5% a year after that, according to sources familiar with the development of the new policy, but the agency will refocus its present spending on the new effort as well.

Other details of the plan, according to the magazine and its sources, include:

• Space shuttle flights would be halted after about 2010;
• NASA would backpedal U.S. involvement in the space station later in that decade;
• The effort to develop an orbital space plane (OSP) to deliver crews to the International Space Station would be scrapped; and
• The Project Prometheus space nuclear power initiative, NASAs principal exploration enabling effort, will be folded into the new activity.

The upcoming article in Aviation Week and Space Technology notes that NASA would be reorganized, with a special headquarters office -- Code T -- to handle the new exploration initiative.

The U.S. return to the Moon, as early as 2013, would also spur efforts to reach for Mars, asteroids, and other objects beyond Earth orbit.