This paper introduces first-order modular logic programs, which  provide a way of viewing answer set  programs  as consisting of many independent, meaningful modules. We also present conservative extensions of such programs. This concept helps to identify strong relationships between modular programs as well as between traditional programs. For example, we illustrate how the notion of a conservative extension can be used to justify the common projection rewriting. This is a short version of a paper that appeared at the 32nd International Conference on Logic Programming.