One thing the other (very good) replies miss: Never underestimate the power of 'gee whiz' technology has on children. This is cool, exciting engineering. Even i

One thing the other (very good) replies miss: Never underestimate the power of 'gee whiz' technology has on children. This is cool, exciting engineering. Even if the scientific results are "boring", that is to say we don't get any unexpected data, the act of pushing the boundaries of what humans have been able to do is inspirational. There are kids who will learn about this in school the next few days, and see it on the news, and hear grown ups talking about how neat it is, and decide "I want to be an engineer", or "I want to be a scientist". It doesn't take many of them making this decision to have a big, long term impact (which provides a great societal ROI on the mission).