Responding to reports that he was looking for a Plan B to address Congressional concerns, the head of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration stated on Thursday that he was “not backing away from the Obama administration’s proposal to reshape the nation’s human spaceflight program”.

According to a report published by The Wall Street Journal on Thursday, Michael L. Coats, director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, had the blessing of Maj. Gen. Charles F. Bolden Jr., the NASA administrator, to explore “what a potential compromise might look like” with Congress over the direction of NASA.

Mr. Coats wrote in an e-mail sent to Stephen J. Altemus, the Chief Engineer at Johnson, on Tuesday that “General Bolden agreed to let us set up a Plan B team”, adding that Plan B was his phrase, not General Bolden’s.

In a statement released by NASA on Thursday, General Bolden said, “I did not ask anyone for an alternative to the president’s plan and budget”.

“The president’s budget for NASA is my budget”, General Bolden said.

“I strongly support the priorities and the direction for NASA that he has put forward”.