Respond to prefers-color-scheme dark in app web views

Follow section front redirects in Spectrum

Enable NLP source in PCS for load testing

Switch off the News Alerts Survey Widget when we have enough responses

Poll to determine if new LUF updates are available

Allows the winning A/B test variant to be turned on without Spectrum deployment

Show infinite scrolling sections in Assembler MultiView

Show option for NLP article summaries in Action Bar

Show NLP summaries collection recirc on article pages

A general feature flag for Recipe Features that aren't yet released

Feature flag for media team features that aren't yet released

Use new Orca video player for preroll plugin in Spectrum

Show the snow tracker (instead of the heat tracker) on Spectrum

Boeing Starliner space launch delayed at least until Friday

Indiana primary election 2024: Latest updates on governor, House races

Substack courts TikTokers with new ‘creators’ program

Book excerpt: The admiral who had a mental breakdown over Fat Leonard

Under Putin, a militarized new Russia rises to challenge U.S. and the West 

A guide to the 2024 Alexandria Democratic primary election 

The next global crisis could come from the sun. We should prepare now.

The crisis Biden and Trump don’t want to deal with

Russia is using toxic chemical weapons, wrecking a ban it helped create

Miss Manners: Greeting a non-parent on Mother’s or Father’s Day 

Ask Amy: I’ve lied about being a Vietnam War veteran for 50 years

Carolyn Hax: Husband admits to one-night stand, wants spouse to ‘let it go’

Lily James shows off train at Met Gala

Middle East conflict live updates: IDF takes control of Rafah border crossing; Biden denounces Hamas, antisemitism in address

Triumphal Putin is inaugurated for fifth term as Russian president 

Ukraine arrests two colonels in protective service in plot to kill Zelensky

Postal worker finds WWII-era letters, drives 5 hours to deliver them

Strangers help Sesame Street puppeteer after heirloom necklace was stolen

Teen grabs wheel when driver passes out and school bus veers into traffic

France tries to shed its rude reputation ahead of the Olympics

Don’t be a jerk at the airport: A guide for headphones

The new cure-all for vacation excess: the IV drip 

The right’s enthusiasm for hyperbole is doing Trump no legal favors

Baseball can crush rookies. Why hasn’t it crushed Trey Lipscomb?

Eddie Rosario and Co. lead the Nats to an MLB-best 12th comeback win

CJ Abrams keeps getting better. It’s time to think about an extension.

House Republicans hold a press conference in advance of tonightÕs State of the Union, on March 01 in Washington, DC.

Big Tech news and how to take control of your data and devices

See more coverage in your recommendations

Technology

Tips delivered to your inbox twice weekly

The Tech Friend newsletter

Business and Tech alerts

Get the weekly Campaign Moment newsletter

Set alerts for major election developments

Election 2024

The Campaign Moment newsletter

Politics alerts

Jonathan Newton

NASA’s top goal might be returning astronauts to the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/04/03/artemis-astronauts-named-nasa/" target=_blank>moon under its Artemis program</a>, but most Americans think that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/10/24/nasa-asteroid-telescope/" target=_blank>watching for asteroids</a> that could hit Earth should be the space agency’s top priority, according to a poll released Thursday. Monitoring climate change was the second-most favored priority.

Respondents in a study released by the nonprofit Pew Research Center were asked to rate the importance of nine separate missions. Only 12 percent of adults think returning astronauts to the<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2023/nasa-moon-artemis-launch/" target=_blank> surface of the moon</a> 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.

By contrast, 60 percent said monitoring asteroids should be the agency’s top priority; 50 percent said monitoring climate change should be NASA’s top priority.

The survey comes as NASA is preparing to send four astronauts around the moon for the first time since the 1970s.<b> </b>The Artemis II mission currently is scheduled for the end of 2024. It follows the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/15/artemis-moon-launch/" target=_blank>Artemis I mission</a>, which last year sent an Orion spacecraft into orbit around the moon, without any astronauts on board.

While NASA is facing cuts in the upcoming budget, funding for exploration has been kept largely intact, at nearly $8 billion. The Senate Appropriations Committee, summarizing the spending bill last week, said that was “sufficient funding to continue progress on the Artemis Campaign Development.”

The space agency is fighting for funding from Congress to land <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/11/09/nasa-moon-artemis-spacex-china/" target=_blank>astronauts on the lunar surface by 2025</a>, a goal that many even within NASA think is optimistic. But NASA Administrator Bill Nelson has said that the United States is in a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/01/14/china-nasa-moon-space/" target=_blank>space race with China</a>, which intends to send astronauts to the moon by 2030. Both countries are eyeing the lunar south pole, where there is water in the form of ice. In recent years, China also has 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.

In addition to NASA’s priorities, Pew’s survey found that NASA remains a popular agency. Sixty-five percent of respondents “say it is essential that NASA continue to be involved in space exploration,” Pew reported. A smaller share, 32 percent, said that the growing commercial space sector would be able to “ensure enough progress is made in space exploration, even without NASA’s involvement.”

NASA established its Planetary Defense Coordination Office in 2016 to actively<b> </b>monitor asteroids that could fly uncomfortably close to Earth. There are no known large asteroids expected to hit Earth over the next 100 years. But NASA estimates it tracks only about 40 percent of the asteroids large enough to cause calamity if they were to strike Earth.

Last year, NASA <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/10/11/nasa-dart-mission-asteroid-success/" target=_blank>successfully</a> completed its first “planetary defense” mission by crashing a spacecraft into an asteroid and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/interactive/2021/nasa-rams-an-asteroid-planetary-defense/?itid=lk_interstitial_manual_19&itid=lk_interstitial_manual_13" target=_blank>changing its trajectory</a>. The mission was just a test, and the asteroid posed no threat to Earth. But it showed that NASA is capable of diverting an asteroid that does pose a threat to the planet.

The poll also found that private space companies such as SpaceX, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic, are doing a mostly good job of building “safe and reliable spacecraft.” And 55 percent of U.S. adults think that people will routinely be traveling to space as tourists in the next 50 years. But only 35 percent said they “would be interested in orbiting Earth in a spacecraft.”

Currently, only Elon Musk’s SpaceX offers paying customers rides to orbit. Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic fly passengers on suborbital trips that go to the edge of space and then return to Earth. (Bezos owns The Washington Post.) The Pew survey did not include a question about such suborbital trips.

SpaceX flies NASA astronauts and professional astronauts from other countries to the International Space Station. It also has taken private citizens there and is planning <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/02/14/jared-isaacman-polaris-spacex-starship-inspiration4/" target=_blank>privately funded missions</a> to space. While many of the space tourists going on these trips are wealthy and have paid enormous sums, in some cases tens of millions of dollars, the Pew survey found that 41 percent of respondents said that the companies are doing a good job of opening space travel to more people, vs.  15 percent who said they were doing a bad job.

Commercial space companies received lower marks when it came to the issue of space debris. Slightly more respondents, 26 percent, said the companies are doing a mostly bad job on the issue than said they were doing a good job when it comes to limiting debris from rockets and satellites in space, 21 percent. Fifty-three said they’re not sure how the companies are faring on the issue.

Debris in space has<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2023/space-debris-game/" target=_blank> become a major problem</a> because it travels so fast, some 17,000 mph, that even small pieces can cause enormous damage. In 2021, Russia fired a missile that blew up a dead satellite. And low Earth orbit is being populated with hundreds of small satellites for SpaceX’s Starlink internet constellation. Amazon also plans to launch its own system in space, which could dramatically increase the number of spacecraft circling the Earth.

Almost 7 in 10 Americans think there will definitely or probably be a “major problem with debris” over the next 50 years, the survey found.

It also found that nearly half of Americans, 44 percent, think the United States “will definitely or probably fight against other nations in space in the next 50 years.”

Emmy Award, 2021. Peabody Award, 2010. On teams that were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in 2005, 2010 and 2011.

The Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos (PublicAffairs, April 2018)

As You Were: To War and Back with the Black Hawk Battalion of the Virginia National Guard

Colby College, B.A., American Studies

Christian Davenport covers NASA and the space industry for The Washington Post's Financial desk. He joined The Post in 2000 and has served as an editor on the Metro desk and as a reporter covering military affairs. He is the author of "The Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos" (PublicAffairs, 2018).

Christian Davenport

washpost

Poll finds Americans cool to NASA plans to return to moon

the-washington-post

Artemis 1 launch 

The Washington Post

Help Desk

Artificial Intelligence

Internet Culture

Space

Tech Policy

Balance of Power Pair

U.S. House Aggregate

U.S. Senate Aggregate

Tech

prism://prism.query/site,/technology/space&limit=20

prism://prism.query/two-sites,/technology,/politics/powerpost/the-technology-202?limit=20

prism://prism.query/site-articles-only,/politics&limit=20

Cut through the 2024 election noise. Get The Campaign Moment newsletter.

Politics

Post Politics from The Washington Post is the source for political news headlines, in-depth politics coverage and political opinion, plus breaking news on the biden administration and White House, Congress, the Supreme Court, elections and more.