By: Benjamin He

Sending people, animals, rockets, or pretty much anything else to space is a bit of a big deal to most people. Or at least, it used to be. In a recent poll conducted by the nonprofit Pew Research Center, most Americans think that monitoring asteroids should be the priority, while second place went to monitoring climate change. ( :l )

The survey asked respondents for their opinion of nine different space-based missions. The results came in saying that only 12 percent of adults think returning astronauts to the surface of the moon should be NASA’s top priority, according to the study. A human landing on Mars is even less popular: Only 11 percent said it should be the top priority.

In stark contrast, a staggering 60 percent of the participants thought that monitoring asteroids should be the agency’s top priority, while some 50 percent believed that monitoring climate change was of utmost importance.

The poll was released Thursday, in the backdrop of NASA preparing to send four astronauts to the moon for the first time since the 1970s. The Artemis II mission is currently scheduled near the end of 2024, the successor of the Artemis I, which sent an empty Orion spacecraft to orbit around the moon last year.

Currently, NASA is fighting Congress to receive the funding to be able to travel to land astronauts on the moon by 2025, which many, even within NASA, think is far-fetched. Bill Nelson, NASA’s lead administrator, refuted this by saying that America is in Space Race Chapter Two, this time against China, who plans to get astronauts on the moon by 2030.

Both countries are focusing on the lunar south pole, which holds water in the form of ice.

China has already built a space station in low Earth orbit and landed a rover on Mars and a robotic spacecraft on the far side of the moon.

Fortunately for NASA, however, they still seem to remain a popular agency. 65 percent of the respondents think that NASA should still be involved in space exploration.