It's a higher priority in the same vein as exploration was a priority before Europe discovered and exploited all of its natural resources. Some of that stuff wasn't where they were.

E.G. Coffee wasn't a European thing in the old world before trade throughout the Middle-East, the Americas and Asia.

Likewise we have no idea what new discoveries we can observe from afar (I mean relative to our own dinky little mud-ball floating in space) than in our back yard of the solar system. So you shotgun the science in hopes of hitting something everywhere.