Should we invest in space exploration while millions of people die of hunger?

I personally am very into sciences and when I got asked this question I instinctively thought: yes of course! But when I forced myself to ask the question why, I found it difficult to come up with an answer. It is a question that is as old as space exploration itself but I still cannot find a satisfactory conclusion.

Each year we spend billions on space exploration, can we justify these spendings while more than 10% of the entire world are chronically malnourished or billions can't access even basic health care?

The obvious explanation would be that agencies such as NASA, ESA, JAXA... provide benefits that indirectly improve humanity but that is not what I am talking about. There is no doubt that such agencies provide great contributions to the scientific field and society, but can we justify research projects such as those studying Mars, the origins of the universe, life on planets that are thousands of light years away...? These are topics that are almost purely out of human curiosity and of which the benefits most likely won't appear for a thousand more years.

I can think of better investments to improve societies in the long term such as global internet networks to spread information efficiently or structured actions to close the yield gap.

I do not want to discuss the examples I mentioned above but mainly the overall idea whether those billions of dollars could be better invested elsewhere or not, or why this is not a good idea.

I kindly ask anyone to leave his or her comments/opinions on this discussion via https://debato.org .

I'm curious to hear your point of view!