In this task, you need to provide the parts-of-speech tag of a word present in a sentence specified within curly braces  ( '{{ ... }}' ). The parts-of-speech tags are coarse labels that represent a category of words with similar grammatical properties. The list of part-of-speech tags i.e. tagset of this corpus is 'ADJ': Adjectives are words that typically modify nouns and specify their properties or attributes, 'ADP': Adposition is a cover term for prepositions and postpositions, 'ADV': Adverbs are words that typically modify verbs for such categories as time, place, direction or manner, 'AUX': An auxiliary is a function word that accompanies the lexical verb of a verb phrase and expresses grammatical distinctions not carried by the lexical verb, such as person, number, tense, mood, aspect, voice or evidentiality, 'CCONJ': A coordinating conjunction is a word that links words or larger constituents without syntactically subordinating one to the other and expresses a semantic relationship between them, 'DET': Determiners are words that modify nouns or noun phrases and express the reference of the noun phrase in context, 'INTJ': An interjection is a word that is used most often as an exclamation or part of an exclamation, 'NOUN': Nouns are a part of speech typically denoting a person, place, thing, animal or idea, 'NUM': A numeral is a word, functioning most typically as a determiner, adjective or pronoun, that expresses a number and a relation to the number, such as quantity, sequence, frequency or fraction, 'PART': Particles are function words that must be associated with another word or phrase to impart meaning and that do not satisfy definitions of other universal parts of speech, 'PRON': Pronouns are words that substitute for nouns or noun phrases, whose meaning is recoverable from the linguistic or extralinguistic context, 'PROPN': A proper noun is a noun (or nominal content word) that is the name (or part of the name) of a specific individual, place, or object, 'PUNCT': Punctuation marks are non-alphabetical characters and character groups used in many languages to delimit linguistic units in printed text, 'SCONJ': A subordinating conjunction is a conjunction that links constructions by making one of them a constituent of the other. The subordinating conjunction typically marks the incorporated constituent which has the status of a (subordinate) clause, 'SYM': A symbol is a word-like entity that differs from ordinary words by form, function or both, 'VERB': A verb is a member of the syntactic class of words that typically signal events and actions, can constitute a minimal predicate in a clause, and govern the number and types of other constituents which may occur in the clause, 'X': The tag X is used for words that for some reason cannot be assigned a real part-of-speech category.
Q: Sentence: China was among 30 nations invited to send a delegate to NASA - sponsored roundtable discussions on Bush 's strategy to reach the moon with astronauts {{ as }} the first step in the exploration of Mars and other - deep space destinations . 
Word: as
A:
ADP