By: Aaron Zeng

In the recent decades space exploration has really advanced a lot, with rovers landing on Mars and the discovery of planets many light years away, the world has truly entered the realm of space exploration.

Lately, NASA has been saying how their top priority is to send more men to the moon, but the public disagrees, instead saying their first priority should be watching for incoming asteroids, with the second being monitoring climate change. With scientists recording Earth’s highest known temperatures just this week, many people are concerned about climate change, and they are even more concerned about asteroids hitting Earth.

Some argue that sending more men to the moon is not necessary, but rather the safety of the people is. “We’ve done the moon – we understand it better than anything else,” Buzz Aldrin, lunar module pilot on the Apollo 11 mission and second man to walk on the moon, told SPACE.com. “We’ve got to stop thinking of short-term hurrahs and start thinking of long-term investments.” Also with John Logsdon, a longtime space historian that attended the apollo 11 launch, says “That impulse is certainly less widespread than it was 50 years ago,”

With just 10% of Americans agreeing with NASA’s top priority, they are far outweighed by those who disagree. With a survey graph showing that the percentage of the American people that think sending more men to the Moon is the second least out of 9 choices, with sending men to Mars being the first.

So will NASA listen to the people and watch out for asteroids and climate change, or spend more money exploring the moon?