Pew Poll: Americans Want Space Program to Focus on Asteroids and Climate More Than Human Spaceflight

The latest poll from the Pew Research Center once again found that by a wide margin Americans want the space program to focus more on the threat from asteroids and understanding Earth’s climate than sending humans to the Moon or Mars. The results are consistent with a 2018 poll that also placed monitoring asteroids and climate at the top of the priority list.

The poll released today on the 54th anniversary of the Apollo 11 astronauts landing on the Moon was probably a disappointment to those working towards returning humans to the Moon with the Artemis program.

Only 12 percent of those polled think sending humans to explore the Moon is a top priority compared to 60 percent who want the focus to be on monitoring asteroids or other objects that could hit Earth. Their second choice is monitoring Earth’s climate system.  Sending humans to the Moon or Mars are at the bottom.

The results are very similar to Pew’s 2018 poll with a slight shift for first place. Climate was first then by a hair, but now asteroids are on top perhaps in part because of NASA’s successful DART mission last year that demonstrated it is possble to change an asteroid’s trajectory.

A majority, 69 percent, want the United States to remain the world leader in space, while 30 percent do not see that as essential.

Despite the growing role of the private sector in space, 65 percent of those polled believe it is essential for NASA to remain involved in space exploration. Pew found that view is “widely held across demographic groups.” While “more than half” of Democrats and Republicans agree, “Democrats are 20 percentage points more likely than Republicans to hold this view (76% vs. 56%).”

Overall, Americans think “private space companies are doing a mostly good job” in building safe, reliable rockets and spacecraft and make “important contributions to space exploration,” though they are less sanguine about their role in limiting space debris. Most are not interested in space tourism, with the percentage less than in 2018 even though private astronaut flights now are a reality. Only 35 percent say they want to fly on a private spacecraft to Earth orbit.

Complete results are on the Pew Research Center’s website.