NASA Pulling Out of ESA-led ExoMars Mission?

Comments like the parent here just drive me nuts! I should give up even reading much less replying to any space-related items here. "NASA is great at viewgraphs and theme parks, but as far as science goes, they're rapidly falling behind." Where does this kind of sentiment come from? Is it in any way bounded by reality? NASA's recent track record for planetary science is pretty good, held up to that of other national space programs (not to disparage those other programs, but just as a point of comparison);

? - JAXA's Akatsuki-Venus mission failed to enter orbit around Venus last year
? - Russia's Phobos-Grunt mission to Martian satellites failed to escape Earth's orbit
? - ESA's Mars Express mission lost it's Beagle-2 lander (crashed?)
? - Cassini's Huygens probe had a fair number of problems, including, at one point, its spinning in the opposite to intended direction during descent
? - India's Chandrayaan lunar probe operated for 312 days before failing , rather than its nominal 2-year mission (probably for thermal reasons)

Compare with
- NASA's MESSENGER, in orbit around Mercury for a year and producing a ream of science data
- NASA's Kepler mission, boosting our count of exoplanets by something like an order of magnitude
- NASA's Mars Rovers, 8 years into a nominal 30-day mission
- NASA's Juno probe, on its way to Jupiter
- NASA's Cassini flagship mission, far into extended mission already and aiming to keep working through 2017
- NASA's MSL, over budget but successfully on its way to Mars
- NASA's New Horizons, now closer to Pluto than any other man-made object, and moreso every day

For the record, other current missions up for extensions include EPOXI, GRAIL, MRO, Mars Odyssey Orbiter, and LRO.

Yes I'm cherry-picking a bit here, but overlooking dozens of other programs also. It's not my job to document all this - but before posting snide little "NASA's good at viewgraphs" comments, maybe do a minimal amount of search.

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/OP_3NRJc1E8/nasa-pulling-out-of-esa-led-exomars-mission

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