Washington correspondent Eun Kim reports ...President Bush has signed into law a bill that would bar NASA from taking any immediate steps to dismantle the space shuttle program.
The legislation also would authorize an extra shuttle mission to the current flight schedule.
The NASA Reauthorization Act essentially lets the next president decide whether to keep the shuttle fleet beyond their current retirement date. It prohibits NASA, until April 30, 2009, from taking any measure that would prevent the option of flying the shuttles beyond 2010. Both Barack Obama and John McCain have expressed support for exploring that idea.
Bush signed the bill into law on Wednesday.
The measure authorizes $20.2 billion for next year's NASA budget, including $1 billion specifically for work to help accelerate development of the Constellation program slated to replace the shuttles. The measure also gives NASA the green light to add an extra flight to the shuttle's current manifest to deliver a physics project, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, to the International Space Station.
But because the bill is an authorization bill, it provides no actual money. Instead, lawmakers who pushed for passage of the measure said it's intended to send a strong message of support for NASA to the next White House administration.
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