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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."
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday June 24 2019, @11:54AM
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.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]