NASA need to justify each of their missions and the money they spend as they are already on a tight budget and being closely monitored by congress. The 'result

NASA need to justify each of their missions and the money they spend as they are already on a tight budget and being closely monitored by congress. The 'results' from missions are stories such as this one and other discoveries. It is in NASA's interest to overplay and overvalue the importance of discoveries from each of these missions. It is sad that NASA has to play this game, since discovering nothing with Mars Pathfinder would be just as interesting to science as discovering something, but it wouldn't make the mission easy to justify the next time they go and ask for a billion dollars.