First of all: MER has been a fabulous success and we need to send more MER clones to Mars. Unfortunately things don't look all that terrific for the other Mars landers. It appears that spacecraft of many names, e.g. Mars-2005/2007/2009/Mars Smart Lander/Mars Science Lab (MSL) will be delayed to 2011. Obviously, MSL is in an infinite loop that will be pushed forward 2 years every 2 years until someone high up grows tired of the futile exercise and cans it. Mars Sample Return (MSR) is now little more than a tired joke. Almost nobody takes MSR planning seriously anymore (it's just busy work). Phoenix has blown out its budget and might get canned (no big surprise since its EDL system is full of bugs). Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) is getting launched this year and that's very exciting (for 2005, our cup is half full). Regrettably no Mars landers are being launched this year. IMHO, ground truth is more important than orbiters for Mars science. Again, we need to send more MER clones to Mars to pick up the slack left by MSL and MSR.

Gary