President Barack Obama has ditched US plans to return to the moon and hitched NASA's future to private industry in a budget calling for the space agency to stay close to Earth and do research. In budget proposals for NASA, Obama proposed increasing funding for the space agency by AU$6.7 billion over five years. But he proposed dropping the massively over-budget program to develop a new-generation rocket called Constellation, put in place by former president George W. Bush and which had been aimed at taking Americans back to the moon. Citing a report issued last year by a commission set...