Imaculata
Hero
No, but we are doing the most convenient one, and have been stuck on Mars for decades.
Science takes time. 'Stuck' in this case, simply means busy learning all kinds of wonderful stuff.
We are (hopefully) learning how to do this on more promising locations.
This IS a promising location, but you've got to start somewhere. There are several planets with an environment a good deal more hostile than that of Mars. Given the fact that most countries that undertake these kinds of missions have tried and failed to reach our closest planet, how about we stick with the closest planet for now? Once we feel like we can reliably land there, we can move on to more challenging projects.
Plus, the work being done here might form the foundation for the first manned journey to Mars, and the first base on Mars. This can then provide a springboard for further exploration of our solarsystem, as we venture deeper and deeper into the great unknown.
Mars is like one of those Star Wars planets. It's uniform because of the environment there. It's all rock and desert. And at the rate we're exploring the cosmos, I'll be long dead before anything interesting happens.
I'd say something very interesting just did happen.
It just depends on how you look at it... Landing a rover on Mars with a frickin' skycrane system and ai navigation is beyond cool. Just look at this! This is scifi stuff! We can do this now: