New life-related geology beckons Opportunity rover

Opportunity has a new (very long range target)--Martian clays are 10 miles away. It would be truly amazing if it can make it there. However there was some other news embedded in this article that I found disturbing:

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MSL's development, however, is increasingly as perilous on Earth as its mission to Mars will be. Its funding reserves are increasingly low just as its development team finds additional hardware problems.

Those problems include new assessments that show MSL nuclear power system will fall short of what will be required to keep critical actuators warm and to operate the rover's Sample Analyses at Mars (SAM) instrument as intended.

"Rover nuclear power system design does not meet present mission requirements, requiring additional battery capacity and possibly addition of a solar array," according to a July 9 review at NASA Headquarters.

The SAM instrument development itself, is also lagging at the Goddard Spaced Flight Center, the report finds.
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I had sort of assumed after the delay of launch for 2 years, it was going to be a piece of cake to get MSL ready, but now I'm not so sure. I believe it would be short sighted to lose another 2 year cycle. I think we need to do whatever it takes to get MSL off the ground at the next launch opportunity.