Perhaps the scenario depicted above has actually scared some people drafting the Administration's budget request for NASA because otherwise it really makes no sense. According to dailyKos user Zaq's diary and this Space.com article, both the incredible rover that could (which has just completed a full marathon on Mars) and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter are to be defunded in fiscal 2016.
This incredibly foolish decision is being taken just as the rover is about to explore exciting new clay-rich regions on Mars and the orbiter is well on the way to providing us with the first full high-res map of the moon, as well as potentially finding the amount and location of Lunar polar ice. That last will be wonderfully useful information to future colonists.
"If we can continue to operate LRO for the next few years, we may eventually obtain a global high-resolution map of the entire moon," Spudis said. This data set will be used for decades to come and will allow the identification of new sites for exploration, utilization and, eventually, habitation, he [Paul Spudis, a space scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston] said.
"The rover is in excellent health, and is poised now just outside Marathon Valley, where orbital data indicate significant concentrations of clay minerals that could provide evidence for past habitable environments. The prospects for important discoveries there and beyond are good," Squyres [Opportunity principal investigator at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York] said.So, I echo Zaq's call to petition your Congressional representatives to save these two valuable missions that are providing a great deal of science value for a relative pittance:
...the more people we get making noise about this, the more likely it is that we'll get the funding restored. Tell your friends, too—this is important!