The US deserves massive, massive kudos for this mission, and space exploration in general.
Granted, lots of other countries do excellent work, there's no doubt about that, but the commitment level is different by a huge margin.
Just take a look at what NASA is doing right this very second. They just landed a rover on Mars; they have 2 satellites around Mars; they have satellites around Saturn, Mercury, and Vesta; they have spacecraft on their way to Jupiter and Pluto; they have a planet hunting space telescope which has discovered hundreds of extra-solar planets already; they have Hubble; they have an X-ray telescope; they have a gamma-ray telescope which just recently provided potential confirmation on the origin and nature of dark matter. Oh, and they have another operational rover on Mars. And this isn't even everything, nor does it touch manned spaceflight.
The ESA has been doing some pretty amazing work in the past few years (with Mars Express, Huygens, Rosetta, Planck/Herschel, XMM, Cluster, SOHO, and their cooperation on NASA missions and others) and Japan and others have been doing good work as well, but the budgetary commitment as a percentage of GDP is just not comparable. We shouldn't take NASA's successes and say "oh, well, a bunch of other nations helped out some too, so, go world!" We should give NASA their due, and we should give other space agencies their due as well, and we should challenge the world to support space science missions to the level they deserve.
Granted, lots of other countries do excellent work, there's no doubt about that, but the commitment level is different by a huge margin.
Just take a look at what NASA is doing right this very second. They just landed a rover on Mars; they have 2 satellites around Mars; they have satellites around Saturn, Mercury, and Vesta; they have spacecraft on their way to Jupiter and Pluto; they have a planet hunting space telescope which has discovered hundreds of extra-solar planets already; they have Hubble; they have an X-ray telescope; they have a gamma-ray telescope which just recently provided potential confirmation on the origin and nature of dark matter. Oh, and they have another operational rover on Mars. And this isn't even everything, nor does it touch manned spaceflight.
The ESA has been doing some pretty amazing work in the past few years (with Mars Express, Huygens, Rosetta, Planck/Herschel, XMM, Cluster, SOHO, and their cooperation on NASA missions and others) and Japan and others have been doing good work as well, but the budgetary commitment as a percentage of GDP is just not comparable. We shouldn't take NASA's successes and say "oh, well, a bunch of other nations helped out some too, so, go world!" We should give NASA their due, and we should give other space agencies their due as well, and we should challenge the world to support space science missions to the level they deserve.