Speaking on the sidelines of the Americas summit in Mexico on Tuesday, Bush would not give details of his plan, but said: "The spirit is going to be one of continued exploration and seeking new horizons and investing in a program that meets that objective."

Critics of the initiative, particularly in Congress, have faulted the government for a lack of vision in the space program after the Columbia disaster last February 1 when the space shuttle broke apart on re-entering the Earth's atmosphere killing all seven astronauts on board.

The ambitious project to establish a training base on the moon that can serve as a launch pad for farther-reaching missions to Mars and elsewhere, is also seen a clever way of announcing plans to phase out the space shuttle by around 2010.

The end of the shuttle era is a touchy subject in Florida and Texas, where the space program provides hundreds of thousands of jobs. The two southern states are vital for Bush's re-election campaign, as well as for Republicans, which hold the majority in both houses of Congress.

By 2010, the space shuttle should have completed all the tasks required to get the International Space Station running, opening the way for new space travel, including an orbital space plane currently being studied, which could ferry crews to the space station, while traditional rockets would transport cargo.

A prototype plane could be ready by 2008, and could be later adapted for longer voyages to the moon and Mars, NASA officials have said.

But one of the moon mission's biggest protagonists, Space Frontier Foundation founder Rick Tumlinson, expressed doubts about the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's capacity to meet the challenge Bush is about to thrust upon it.

"It will never get cheaper if the government stays in control," he said.

"What I'm afraid of is they'll go to the moon, lock everybody else out, and NASA will run the show."

Still, the potential scientific and economic dividends of lunar exploration are significant.

"By 2050, approximately 10 billion people will live on Earth, demanding five times the power now available. By then, solar power from the moon could provide everyone clean, affordable and sustainable electrical power needs," David Criswell, a physics professor at the University of Houston in Texas, said at a Senate hearing in November.

For Criswell, the author of three works on lunar exploration, "no terrestrial option can provide the needed minimum of at least 20 terawatts globally" that will be necessary in nearly 50 years.

The cost of such a project remains to be seen, but Congress rejected a similar proposal by Bush's father, former president George Bush, in 1989, which could have cost some 400 billion dollars.

This time, Bush will have to promise budgetary discipline, limiting NASA's annual budget increase to a mere five percent of its current budget of 15 billion dollars -- or nearly 800 million dollars -- requiring some belt-tightening in other space programs deemed to be less of a priority.

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