Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

July 21 (Xinhua) A recent survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, a well-known polling institution in the United States, found that most Americans want NASA to devote more energy to monitoring asteroids that may hit the earth, rather than sending astronauts to the moon.

NASA's primary goal may be to send astronauts to the moon through the Artemis program. But according to a survey released on Thursday, most Americans believe that detecting asteroids that could hit Earth should be a top priority for the NASA, while monitoring climate change comes second.

In the study released by the Pew Research Center, respondents were asked to rate the importance of nine different tasks. According to the survey, only 12 percent of American adults believe that sending astronauts back to the lunar surface should be a top priority for NASA. Human landing on Mars is even less popular, with only 11% of people saying it is a top priority.

By contrast, 60 per cent believe that monitoring asteroids should be a top priority for NASA, while 50 per cent believe that monitoring climate change should be the highest priority.

Tuyuan PexelsNASA is preparing to send four astronauts to orbit the moon, the first human flight to the moon since the 1970s. NASA currently plans to complete the mission called Artemis 2 by the end of 2024. Last year, the Artemis 1 mission put an Orion spaceship without astronauts into orbit around the moon.

Although NASA faces a disadvantage of budget cuts, the amount of money spent on lunar exploration remains largely unchanged, at nearly $8 billion (currently about 57.36 billion yuan). The Senate Appropriations Committee summed up the spending bill last week, saying the money was "sufficient to continue the Artemis mission".

NASA is seeking more funding from Congress to send astronauts to the lunar surface by 2025, but many NASA insiders believe the goal is too optimistic.

The Pew Research Center survey also found that NASA is still popular with the majority of Americans. Sixty-five percent of respondents "believe that it is important for NASA to continue to participate in space exploration," the survey report said. 32 per cent said the growing commercial space sector could "ensure sufficient progress in space exploration"even without the participation of NASA".

NASA established the Planetary Defense Coordination Office in 2016 to proactively monitor asteroids close to Earth. Experts say no large asteroids are expected to hit Earth in the next 100 years. But NASA estimates that only about 40 per cent of the larger asteroids can be tracked down enough to cause disaster on Earth.

Last year, NASA successfully completed its first planetary defense mission, controlling a spaceship to crash into an asteroid and changing its orbit. This mission is just a test, and the target asteroid is no threat to Earth. But this mission shows that NASA has the ability to change the trajectory of an asteroid that poses a threat to Earth.

The survey also found that private space companies such as SpaceX, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic have done a good job in building "safe and reliable spacecraft." Fifty-five percent believe that in the next 50 years, people will be able to travel to space regularly in the role of ordinary tourists. But only 35% said they were "interested in flying around the earth in a spaceship".

Currently, only SpaceX, owned by Elon Musk, offers Earth-orbiting services to paying customers. Jeff Bezos (Jeff Bezos) led by Blue Origin and Richard Branson (Richard Branson) led by Virgin Galaxy is allowing passengers to travel to the edge of space and return to Earth after suborbital travel. The Pew survey did not address the issue of suborbital travel.

Today, SpaceX can take astronauts and ordinary people to the International Space Station and carry out privately funded space missions. Many of the space tourists who took part in these trips were rich and paid tens of millions of dollars. The Pew survey found that 41 per cent of respondents said these companies had done a good job of opening up space travel to more people, but 15 per cent said they did not do well.

Commercial space companies, by contrast, score lower on space debris. Twenty-six percent of respondents thought these companies had done a poor job in this area, while 21 percent thought they had done a good job in limiting rocket and satellite debris. Fifty-three percent said they were not sure about the performance of these companies.

Space debris has become a big problem because it is very fast, reaching about 17000 miles (27000 kilometers) per hour, and even small debris can cause huge damage to space equipment. SpaceX's star chain project is launching thousands of small satellites into low-Earth orbit, and Amazon plans to build satellite Internet in space, which could greatly increase the number of spacecraft orbiting the Earth.

The survey found that nearly 70% of people believe that "major problems about space debris" will definitely or may arise in the next 50 years.

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