Watch Live: White Panel Holds First Hearing

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BLOGGER NOTE, 12:45 p.m.: The panel is on its lunch break and will resume at 1:15 p.m. with a session that will outline alternatives to the Ares rockets and Orion spacecraft NASA is developing for an American return to the moon. You can watch live by clicking the NASA TV box on the righthand side of the page to launch our NASA TV viewer.

A key member of Congress to a White House panel today that NASA is not receiving enough money to carry out its charter and that the agency's budget as now laid out will not be sufficient to return American astronauts to the moon by 2020.

"NASA was asked to do too much with too little and that has led us to the point that we are -- with a space shuttle that is going to be shut down without the new rocket having been developed in time to pick up where the space shuttle leaves off," U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fl., told the Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee, also known as the Augustine Committee.

Noting that the committee is going to have great influence on the course President Obama sets for NASA, Nelson urged the committee to minimize the anticipated five-year gap between the 2010 retirement of the space shuttle fleet and the first piloted flights of the Ares I and Orion spacecraft in March 2015.

Nelson, who flew on the shuttle with NASA Administrator nominee Charlie Bolden in January 1986, warned the committee that the current proposed NASA budget includes $3 billion less than had been planned. If adopted, he said the gap might stretch to "six, seven, possibly eight years" and there would be no way U.S. astronauts would return to the moon by 2020.

Nelson said he didn't think anybody wants America to rely on Russia to fly American astronauts to and from the International Space Station for that long, and he also urged the panel to consider extending NASA operations on the station beyond 2015.

Coming up this afternoon: The panel will hear about alternatives to NASA's planned Ares-Orion-Altair architecture.

Here's the agenda:

The panel is running about 15 minutes behind schedule.

++1 p.m.: Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle considerations.

++2 p.m.: Other commercial launch capabilities, including NASA Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) Program; SpaceX COTS program status; Orbital COTS program status International Space Station commercial resupply services process and
status.

++3:30 p.m.: Alternative architectures: Direct; space shuttle side-mount options.

++4:30 p.m.: Public comment period.

++5 p.m.: Meeting adjourned.

Following the meeting, Augustine will answer questions from the news media from approximately 5:05 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.

For committee information, charter, biographies and schedules, visit:
The Panel's Website.