Then there's the replacement for Hubble, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which has been very expensive with lots of cost overruns, and now this asteroid mission.
The JWST will have equipment on it capable of determining the chemistry of the atmospheres of alien worlds based on the how the light of its star changes as it passes through.
As a result, the astronomers demonstrated in their research that the JWST should be able to detect the presence of water vapor and oxygen in an atmosphere in just a few hours of observation.
Planetary scientists like Dr Robert Pappalardo at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory have grown increasingly frustrated as proposals to explore the further reaches of the solar system have been sidelined in favour of Mars and the JWST.
If you include the uncertainty from the summer campaign by some politicians on Capitol Hill to have the JWST terminated - a project that represents a half-billion-euro investment for Europe - you will forgive many Europeans for thinking that the US is a pretty unreliable partner right now.