On April 7, Ambassador Robert Gass hosted an Odyssey Launch event at Jetty Park in Cape Canaveral, Florida. About 3000 visitors were able to learn about the mission and watch Mars Odyssey launch. Here is what Robert has to say,

"The launch of Mars Odyssey on March 7, 2001 proved to be an excellent opportunity for educating the public about Mars and the Mars exploration program. We even spilled over in to several other topics including the use of the Deep Space Network, Genesis, NEAR, Galileo, Ulysses, and many others. We set up five stations with each covering a different topic. One featured telescopes that showed the Sun and highlighted Genesis and SOHO, another featured Meteors and photos of asteroids and talked about NEAR, the third featured the launch vehicle and miscellaneous projects, the forth was devoted to Odyssey and Mars, and the fifth was a coloring station for the kids. There was a lot of interest and we were mobbed most of the time we were there.

I would do this again in a heartbeat! And I am already working on doing something like it for Genesis. Next time it would be advisable to set up earlier to avoid getting mobbed as soon as we get there and more volunteers would be helpful. It took me six months to put this together so my advice for anybody looking to do an event like it would be to start early and don't give up! Red tape can be a problem."

An additional note, Robert is an accountant who took a day off from his job (during tax time) to conduct this very successful event.

Robert spent most of his time sharing his vast knowledge of Mars, the NASA space program, as well as some of his artifacts, including Mars soil samples, actual meteorites, books, and posters to anyone that had an interest. We also had a remote control replica of the Mars Pathfinder (Sojourner), miniature models of the Pathfinder/Mars Lander, Galileo, Cassini, and the Mars Polar Lander, made by Hot Wheels for NASA, and a pair of telescopes set up for viewing the latest sun spots that have been affecting our magnetosphere the past few weeks.

If you click on this image, you will be able to see the Solid Rocket Boosters seconds after separation. They are on the right side of the exhaust trail, just above the wind disturbed portion of the exhaust. (the loops of smoke)

Unfortunately, the picture didn't turn out the greatest, but we had a couple telescopes set up to view the recent sun spots that have been affecting our magnetosphere. This year has been one of the most active, and most severe, in history. The above picture reflects Sunspot 20010407. Click on the image for a larger view.