Two probes were lost that year: Mars Climate Orbiter was destroyed when government and contractor engineers mixed up converting between English and Metric measurements. Then Mars Polar Lander went silent after beginning its final landing sequence.

The humiliating fiasco prompted an overhaul of NASA's Mars exploration program and included the addition of independent reviews and pre-flight tests, raising the price tag of Mars Odyssey by several million dollars and risking support for future Martian flights.

"This mission has to succeed, there's no question," said Ed Weiler, NASA chief of the space science office in Washington, D.D. "We're going across a hundred million miles of space. Bad things can happen. We've done the kind of testing, we've done the kind of checking that we know how to do. Beyond that, I really don't know what else we could do.''

If all goes well, Mars Odyssey will spend more than two years circling the Red Planet and training its trio of major science instruments on the planet to look for signs of water -- past or present -- within the rusting red soil. And where there's water -- the theory goes -- life cannot be far away.

"If there was life on Mars or is life on Mars today, I think over the next 15 to 20 years we'll be able to answer that," Weiler said. "We're on the verge of being able to say that perhaps life on Earth was not a cosmic fluke, but it was part of a broader cosmic imperative."

Meanwhile, there was plenty of life evident around the Florida launch site Saturday as perfect weather and a high-profile launch combined to entice thousands of residents and tourists to jam the roads around the space center for an up close view of the Boeing Delta 2 rocket lifting off.

No one was disappointed. Right on time the 13-story rocket rode its column of smoke and fire to the northeast, marking its path across sunny, crystal clear skies.

And as good as the view was from the ground, it was even better from the two cameras placed by NASA and Boeing on the outside of the Delta 2. One camera pointed down and one pointed up, providing live televised views of the climb to orbit that were sharper and more detailed than any rocketcams seen before.

About 31 minutes after launch the Mars Odyssey spacecraft separated from the Delta 2 rocket's third stage, officially ending the launch on a successful note. A few minutes later flight controllers began communicating with the probe, which was reported to be in good health despite one sensor that said a spot on a solar panel was getting a little hot.

"I've never seen a more spectacular launch," said David Spencer, Mars Odyssey's mission manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "The spacecraft seems to be performing beautifully, and we're right on our timeline. This gives us a terrific start on our odyssey to Mars."

Still ahead for Mars Odyssey during the next few days and weeks: a maneuver to set itself on a more precise path to Mars and tests of the science instruments that will include the first picture taken by the probe, in this case an infrared image of Earth.