Way to go JPL! Mars Odyssey launches sucessfully and is on its way to Mars. I hope this mission works. NASA's budget may depend on it. For some reason Mars has been fantastically difficult to get to, and NASA can't afford to screw up again for the third time in a row. Look at the American history of Mars efforts:

1964 - Mariner 3's protective launch sheild fails to jettison, preventing the spacecraft from attaining its Mars trajectory.

1971 - Mariner 8's launch rocket tumbles out of control and falls into the ocean.

1992 - Mars Observer disappears three days before reaching Mars.

1998 - Mars Climate Orbiter burns up in the atmosphere of Mars due to a metric/English conversion error in the guidance plan.

1999 - Mars Polar Lander disappears just before entering the Mars atmosphere.

1999 - Deep Space 2 microprobes returned no telemetry and were presumed lost.

That's six total failures to the eight partial and total successes for the US. The rest of the world has faired even worse with 12 total failures and 7 successes! Why is Mars so hard to get to??