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posted by martyb on Monday June 24 2019, @01:33AM   Printer-friendly
from the meat-brains-need-not-apply dept.

AP-NORC poll: Asteroid watch more urgent than Mars trip

Americans prefer a space program that focuses on potential asteroid impacts, scientific research and using robots to explore the cosmos over sending humans back to the moon or on to Mars, a poll shows.

The poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, released Thursday, one month before the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, lists asteroid and comet monitoring as the No. 1 desired objective for the U.S. space program. About two-thirds of Americans call that very or extremely important, and about a combined 9 in 10 say it's at least moderately important.

The poll comes as the White House pushes to get astronauts back on the moon, but only about a quarter of Americans said moon or Mars exploration by astronauts should be among the space program's highest priorities. About another third called each of those moderately important.

"More than 80% say the United States is not leading the world in space exploration."


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  • (Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Monday June 24 2019, @10:15AM (2 children)

    by PiMuNu (3823) on Monday June 24 2019, @10:15AM (#859299)

    > "More than 80% say the United States is not leading the world in space exploration."

    I wonder how this perception arises. Hubble, WMAP, SpaceX (US owned and largely NASA funded), various Mars and other planetary probes... I don't know who else is "leading" if not the US and in particular NASA.

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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Monday June 24 2019, @11:54AM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Monday June 24 2019, @11:54AM (#859313) Journal

    The only group that can even come close is the ESA, and a lot of their most ambitious missions [wikipedia.org] haven't launched yet. You may have heard of XMM-Newton, Rosetta, Herschel, Planck, Gaia, and BepiColombo. Gaia might be the biggest deal out of that pack, providing a lot of useful data about our galaxy. They have CHEOPS [wikipedia.org] launching this year, providing a nice and small (€50 million) exoplanet measurement mission.

    Russia's program is not doing well, especially on the science side. India is launching its own rockets and doing science missions, but is still a small program. China has a lot of ambition, but their program won't blossom for at least several years.

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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday June 24 2019, @03:51PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday June 24 2019, @03:51PM (#859379) Journal
    I don't know what the supposed perception means (would be interesting to know who sponsored this poll), but why would having a few more space projects be "leading" in the usual sense? Leadership always struck me as being more than having a longer list of stuff to do.