SLS and Orion

[Tiberion]

It's not like NASA has had a huge choice in the matter. The Constellation program was a result of the Bush administration's mandate to go back to the moon. Which would have been fine except Constellation itself ended up having some major issues with its hardware design (it wasn't quite up to it, and it was trending expensive. It had some sourcing of shuttle parts, but not enough to make it 'too big to die'

So Obama prompty finished it off and decided we're going to Mars now. And we started over on a new giant rocket. The space industry, not wanting to see another project evaporate really tied this one to that pork spending, so it's likely here to stay.

We're not ready to go to Mars anyway, so there isn't any hardware being designed for that yet. That will likely start being developed in the early 2020s, hopefully before the end of the iSS and not after it, or a Mars mission is likely 2035 or beyond. For now, NASA's plans for the SLS are definitely only for Orion and the service module, making flights around the moon in the interest of human spaceflight duration who maybe asteroid fragment studies if anything ever comes of that. It is going to be baby steps, because that is what they can afford to develop.

On a related note, they just announced that they're going to piggyback some science on the next SLS flight in the form of a dozen Cubesats. Now Cubesats aren't that amazing usually, but these will be launched beyond Earth orbit, which is something that class of payload doesn't have much access to. it isn't exactly clear if all of the Cubesats will be made by NASA teams or if some will be from partners, but they have announced the 1st three selected:

A Solar-sail moon probe that will explore the dark side of the moon.

A Solar-sail asteroid probe which will slowly sail out to an asteroid and take readings in preparation for future asteroid-adjacent missions

A radiation experiment to measure rad exposure to organisms in space beyond Earth Orbit.

You can read about that here: http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/systems/sls/space-launch-system-to-boost-science-with-secondary-payloads.html?linkId=13309559#.VR5g0pMe1ik

So, I think its pretty good news that they're going to utilize that huge rocket even a little more efficiently by sending along some pretty cool science. None of them will likely be Earth-shattering in scope, but it at least hints that they have a plan they are working towards, and aren't just sitting and waiting for money.