By: Puter Kang

People might assume that returning to the moon under the Artemis program is NASA’s highest priority. Surprisingly, in a poll last week, people voted the most for protecting Earth from asteroids.

The non-profit Pew Research Center hosted this poll. They asked the respondents to rate the importance of 9 separate missions relating to NASA.

Only 12% of the adults agreed on letting astronauts return to the surface on the moon, and 10% for letting humans land on Mars.

On the contrary, 60% agreed on monitoring the asteroids for dangerous movement and 50% chose keeping an eye on climate change.

After successfully removing an asteroid and causing it to crash away, NASA showed their capability of eliminating asteroids and protecting the planet, even though the asteroid posed no harm to earth.

That might be another reason why the poll results ended surprisingly.