What upsets me, Larry, is that there are those on this
website who tend to ignore the ability and skills of the
mission-control engineers & technicians who look after deep-space
missions like STARDUST, Japanese Mars Probe, BEAGLE-2, etc...

Those engineers & technicians are damn good at what they do.

There is no need for some on Habitablezone.com to echo those
misleading, sensationalized Media reports that appear from time-to-time
that are unjustly ALARMIST every time a deep-space probe has
a mechanical or electronic problem or glitch.
Most of those problems are temporary or minor, NOT MISSION THREATENING. Even some of the 'serious' problems encountered by such spacecraft CAN BE OVERCOME or BYPASSED through
ingenuity, redundancy, or even sometimes by something as simple as rebooting a system.

To give creedence to such sensationalized, alarming media reports
that alas appear too often on Space.com, MSNBC, Spaceflight Noiw, etc. about the health of deep-space missions is bad-mouthing, or at least ignoring the skills and talents of those mission-control engineers
who look after those expensive pieces of hardware they put thier heart into. God bless them for what they do.

Jacob