Last month, NASA’s spacecraft “Juno” completed its eighth flyby of Jupiter, according to NASA’s website.

This flyby came with the release of up close and personal photos of the gas giant.

In 2016, NASA’s budget took up .5 percent of the U.S. federal budget of $3.95 trillion, according to Forbes.

This sparked a debate for the Spectator Editorial Board: Should the United States invest more money in space exploration?

One speaker said yes.

“Science has a lot of things to say about our universe and our future,” the speaker said. “I think that if we invest more money in the space program … we’ll be able to further advance the state of the nation.”

Another member said the earth will be destroyed by nuclear weapons due to the U.S.’s vast military budget. If the U.S. dedicated some of that money to space exploration, the member said, we could find a way to live on another planet after this happens.

“Once we do develop the ability to live in space, fingers crossed that we do that, because otherwise it’s over for us,” the speaker said.

Additionally, capitalism has taken over some space exploration, one speaker said.

“SpaceX (a private space exploration company) has found a way to minimize the cost of space travel and NASA has not,” the speaker said.

As far as where the money would come from, the same speaker thought it could be taken from other parts of the U.S. federal budget. They also said no matter what the government does, people will have mixed feelings about it.

The Spectator Editorial Board voted 5-1-2, with five members voting for increasing the space exploration budget, one voting against it, and two members choosing to abstain.