This week, unmanned rover Curiosity landed on Mars and began exploring. The US space program has been in a state of limbo recently, mainly due to budget issues, but many people still think it’s important to explore new terrains. So what do Americans think about the future of the space program and the probability of finding anything on Mars or other planets? And how many have been paying close attention to the Mars rover?
Curiosity Landing
In Ask Your Target Market’s latest survey, 15% of US respondents said they watched the Curiosity landing earlier this week. Another 19% said they watched the landing, but not when it actually happened. 47% said they were aware the landing happened but did not watch it. And 19% of respondents said they were not aware of the Curiosity landing that took place earlier this week.
Space Program
In general, 34% of Americans said they think it is very important for us to learn as much as possible about Mars and other planets. Another 41% said they think learning more about other planets is somewhat important. 19% said they don’t think learning about other planets is very important, and just 6% said they don’t think space exploration is important at all.
36% of survey takers said they would definitely support the US sending a manned aircraft to Mars at some point in the future. 22% said they definitely would not support a manned mission to Mars. 24% said they would support it depending on the price tag. And 18% said it would depend on other factors.
Life on Mars
Overall, 24% of respondents said they think there is life on Mars. 43% think there is no life on Mars, and 33% have no opinion. Alternatively, 55% said they do think there is life on other planets, and just 22% think there is not. 24% had no opinion.
You can view the complete survey results in the widget below and be sure to click “Open Full Report” to take advantage of all the chart and filter options.
Photo Credit: Curiosity from Flickr
What do you want to know? If you need some consumer insights on a particular topic, let us know in the comments below and we’ll consider it for an upcoming survey post.
Results were collected on August 7 via AYTM’s online survey panel.
