Every two years, NASA reviews its long-running scientific missions — currently, the rovers trundling across Mars, the Cassini spacecraft exploring Saturn, and four others — to determine whether they are justifying their cost.

Last week, NASA presented the findings of the most recent review, conducted by a panel of outside experts, to the planetary science subcommittee of the NASA Advisory Council, which provides guidance to the agency’s management.

All seven will continue, assuming NASA can find the money to pay for them.

In particular, Cassini is to continue orbiting Saturn for three more years, making detailed measurements of the ringed planet’s gravitational and magnetic fields. The Curiosity rover is to continue searching for organic molecules in the Martian rocks — though the panel sharply criticized the rover’s mission team, saying its extension proposal “lacked scientific focus and detail” and placed too much emphasis on driving across the terrain rather than stopping to study the rocks.

Still, “all extended missions were rated higher than ‘good,’ some after adjustments to scope, as it was recognized that they continue to add important new data and observations for our understanding of solar system bodies and processes,” the review panel concluded.