Just a few days before the Ares test rocket is scheduled to make its first test flight coming Tuesday, the much-awaited presidential advisory panel's review of the US space program has delivered its blow - suggesting that NASA needs to downsize some of its extravagant plans pertaining to its moon mission.

In its final 155-page report on NASA's troubled exploration programs, the review panel, created by the White House in May, said that the Ares rocket is a trifle too expensive a proposition for replacing the space shuttle.

The report further noted that NASA has picked the wrong destination with the wrong rocket, since it will not be ready to serve as a launcher for space station crews until 2017 - the time when the International Space Station is due for removal from orbit.

Further, recommending that NASA should make a shift away from moon-focused initiatives for human space exploration, the review panel's chairman Norman Augustine said that astronauts should aim for other destinations, like a nearby asteroid or one of the moons of Mars, as that could be undertaken much sooner than returning to the moon in the proposed 15 years.

In the opinion of Augustine, NASA should plan to return to the moon only as a training springboard, and not as a key destination, as envisaged by the former President Bush's plan.