First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton visits CCC

On Thursday May 4, 2000 the First Lady of the United States visited the Clinton Community College.  Needless to say our whole campus was excited and thrilled to host such a distinguished visitor.  Although many other visitors have stayed on the bluff-point facility in the past, including Presidents and Kings ( see their history pages ), it has been a long time since someone of Mrs. Clinton's stature has visited the site.

I was fortunate to have the honorable pleasure to meet Mrs. Clinton and advise her of the NASA MGS MOC issues with respect to the image release problems all Mars enthusiasts know about.  i.e. NASA is required to release ALL MGS MOC images after 6 months and ALL 'public interest' images within 72 hours.  Since the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft entered Mars orbit in September 1997 NASA has had difficulties in honoring its commitment to the public regarding images from this spacecraft. [ 5/27/2001 update- see March 1, 2001 NASA FOIA reply where they admit this at the Broken Promises page. ]

When I met and shook her hand, (pictures and update below), my comments were as follows:

"It is an honorable pleasure to meet and ask you to help in your present capacity to see that all the Mars images taken by the Global Surveyor spacecraft be released within the 6 month NASA policy."

She asked, "What's the problem?"

I replied, "All images are to be released after 6 months and NASA and MSSS are not releasing these images as required by their own rules and contracts.  We've just lost 2 spacecraft and I believe the public has a right to ask NASA to release all the images from the working spacecraft around Mars in accordance with their own stated policy."

She said "No one has ever asked me about Mars before. Give (?) your information and we'll look into it." and directed a staff member (whose name I unfortunately did not get) to get my information.  I wrote down my name, home address, phone, website address and the message :"Release all Mars images now" on a card and handed it to the staff.

I look forward to seeing if somehow she can get NASA to simply comply with their own rules regarding Mars images.

I will keep everyone posted on the responses.

Bob...

UPDATE-----UPDATE-----UPDATE

On the evening of Friday May 5, 2000, I performed my daily web check-in at http://ida.wr.usgs.gov  for any new postings of CDs of the MGS MOC data, since this is the official PDS repository site for these images.   What a surprise to find several new CDs of data posted within 36 hours after talking with Mrs. Clinton.  THANK YOU ! ! ! ! from me and ALL the Mars enthusiasts for this posting.  While I do not know with 100% certainty Mrs. Clinton had anything to do with this; from my standpoint, Thursday had no new data for more than 5 months despite repeated attempts to Congress, the press, NASA, JPL, USGS and MSSS,  36 hours after telling Mrs. Clinton about the problem, I see results.

THANK YOU AGAIN Mrs. Hillary Rodham Clinton ! ! !

The pics, Me (with the Face on Mars T-Shirt!) n Hillary:

Thank you again Hon. Senator Hillary Rodham-Clinton.

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