The exploration of NEOs would be useful for NASA in the development of its Orion spacecraft that is being developed for its lunar missions.

CNN: Space's threat to civilization

Nasa is due to retire its space shuttles next year and replace them with the Orion spacecraft, an Apollo-like capsule that would launch on a new rocket called Ares 1.

BBC: Moon astronauts urge Mars mission

Since the White House proposed to stop work altogether on the Orion spacecraft and associated Ares rockets earlier this year in favor of shifting funds to nurture commercial-space alternatives, many Republican House members have sought to save Orion.

WSJ: Lockheed Martin Sees Space Capsule Test Flight in 2013

While NASA works with U.S. industry partners to develop these capabilities, the agency also is developing the Orion spacecraft and the Space Launch System (SLS), a crew capsule and heavy-lift rocket to provide an entirely new capability for human exploration.

ENGADGET: NASA awards Boeing, SpaceX and Sierra Nevada $30 million in contracts

It is up to Barack Obama to make a final decision based on the options presented by the panel, but none of the options considered viable includes the default path, the shuttle-derived Ares I rocket and Orion spacecraft, to service the space station.

ECONOMIST: Science

Designed to be flexible for launching spacecraft for crew and cargo missions, SLS and Orion will expand human presence beyond low-Earth orbit and enable new missions of exploration in the solar system.

ENGADGET: NASA awards Boeing, SpaceX and Sierra Nevada $30 million in contracts

After seeing some of the facilities being used to build our nation's next-generation spacecraft, we were awed by the sheer scope and complexity of the Orion project.

ENGADGET: Lockheed Martin shows us how it's getting Orion ready to explore the cosmos