Mars rovers mark fifth anniversary

Spirit and Opportunity, two robotic Mars rovers, are celebrating five years on the red planet. This is quite the feat considering they were originally designed for a 90 day mission. This either makes them the most reliable American made vehicles ever or the elaborate ending to some interesting game theory. Given the way the American auto industry is faring, I choose to believe it is the latter.
It is no secret that government organizations around the world rely on the central bureaucracy's budget for support. Some programs, such as primary education or health care, are quite visible whereas the benefits of science funding is not as easy to see. It can help lead to a more educated work force by promoting tertiary education or attracting highly skilled foreign labour which increases domestic production but since there tends to be a delay in satisfaction laypeople often do not see the benefits to taxpayer funded research.
This makes the funding of government departments focused on research more volatile. NASA may suffer the most from this volatility. They tend to focus on fewer, more expensive projects. Even the current mantra of 'faster, better, cheaper' may mean their average mission is smaller than a decade ago but still much larger than the research programs at government sponsored university labs. NASA also has a history of major failures to overcome. One such incident in 1999, saw a major Martian mission destroyed because the American scientists were dealing in imperial measurements while their European counterparts worked in metric. Then there are the more visible disasters involving space shuttles:

So how would an organization whose financial allocations are unstable try to expand their budget? Perhaps by making spectacular successes as well? Manned missions tend to get more attention by the general populous so sending people to the International Space Station may help garner a greater budget even though the scientific merits may be dubious. The photos of earth rising from the lunar surface taken by Apollo astronauts are still popular postcards that can be bought anywhere in the world. I am sure if NASA managed to return Man to the Moon they would likely see the huge budget required to step foot on Mars.
Alas NASA cannot run a pure publicity campaign. So convincing scientists is also an important step. Once science funding is increased they still need to compete with the likes of the National Science Foundation, its associated medical arm (taking money from cancer research requires one to be seriously cunning) and myriad others. So perhaps they could show that, although there are regular failures, an equal number of missions exceed their targets by extraordinary amounts. Or, perhaps, it is simply damage control. If the rovers lasted a mere six weeks and the targets were five years that would be a disaster but if the mission parameters stated 90 days then six weeks is, at least, 50 percent. Not bad.
Either way I like NASA and I am pretty sure their primary goal is to satisfy me which they have.