I'm not news hound, but I do spend too much time on tech sites (HN/Reddit) that would report this. I remember years ago mention of China (and India) moon missions. But, really first man mad object to land in 37 years should have been blasted over most news sources.
After shock... "Kick ass, we're (finally) getting back on the moon!"
Many comments thereof lamented the lack of coverage by the mainstream media.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-february-4-2014/who-fr...
NASA, despite its huge budget cuts, in the last decade has operated three rovers on Mars, landed one new one (via spectacular jet crane awesomeness). They've built new types of rockets, taken pictures of the universe, continued to do valuable research in science and space. Continued to be a major contributor to the ISS. And much much more.
I think the real question here is, where have you been for the last decade?
Well, this is a bit subjective, in my book selective reporting that focuses on negativity is bashing.
I am all for more budgets for NASA. Quite frankly, I don't follow NASA's missions very often. For the past decade I did hear from time to time that NASA sent rovers to some planets. Meanwhile, I kept hearing the flip-flop stories about the water on Mars. It gave me impression that NASA either went hugely under-budget on their Mars' missions or they spread themselves too thin. That was my point (admittedly I may need to soften my tone in my comment). Not sure if NASA had a vision problem, in my opinion, it may have made more impact and (hopefully) got more funding if they narrowed down their scope of missions and obtained more decisive results.
> either went hugely under-budget on their Mars' missions or they spread themselves too thin
I think that is a misread of the situation; the lack of a consistent narrative and publicity across NASA and its missions has more to do with the organizational structure of the PR and public education/outreach within NASA than the science or the mission management itself.
this paints a really extreme (go figure) picture of china. some people think it's the most amazing place on earth and some people think it's some kind of post apocalyptic hellscape.
as always, the truth can be found by actually going there, something most people with very strong opinions about china have never done and probably never will do, in all likelihood
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6904717
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7128978
Yes, ISRO (India's space agency) sent an orbiter and impactor to Moon called Chandrayaan-1, back in 2008. NASA and ISRO's instruments on-board Chandrayaan-1 had detected water on Moon.
It's good to see rekindled interest in science missions to satellites and planets. I'm eagerly waiting for ISRO's next Moon mission, Chandrayaan-2, which will have a soft lander and a rover. Probably in 2016 :)