I remember years ago when MGS arrived at Mars and began taking the highest resolution images to date. There were some, especially in the "face" crowd, who were disappointed that the pictures didn't live up to their fantasies. Geez! How jaded must some people be that they're not impressed with pictures from the surface of a planet over 100 million miles away, especially given the terrible track record nations have had with Mars probes! In 40 years of sending probes to Mars, this is only the 4th one to land safely and continue functioning. This stuff isn't easy, and after dual losses 4 years ago, I'm not overly upset that NASA and the JPL played it safe.

It'd be especially interesting if they were willing to accept a slightly higher element of risk with the second lander now that the first one is down safe, but they're almost certainly going to play it pretty safe (relatively speaking) with the second one, too.