Take Me to Your Leader in the Goofy Glasses

Mark Margolis is hoping to see plenty of green from NASA’s landing on the Red Planet.

Margolis’ Reseda firm, Rainbow Symphony Inc., makes three-dimensional glasses used to view the panoramic images being released through the websites of NASA and its Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, which designed and built the Spirit rover that landed on Mars on Saturday.

Rainbow, one of several companies with links on JPL’s Mars website, was deluged with calls Monday.

That’s when the first 3-D photo of the Martian landscape was unveiled.

“We’re getting loads of people calling us for our glasses,” Margolis said, noting that about 150 orders had come in as of Monday afternoon.

It’s no wonder. NASA said the Mars landing was a bigger attraction on its website than any other recent event.

The 513 million hits to marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov in the first 48 hours after the landing have far eclipsed the traffic to the site after both last year’s devastating Columbia accident and the original Mars Pathfinder landing in 1997, said Brian Dunbar, who manages NASA’s Web portal.

Among the big draws are the three-dimensional panoramic shots taken by a rover camera. But you need special glasses, with red and blue lenses, to see the photos in full detail.

Rainbow has been selling specialty optical products for more than 25 years. Its website sells 3-D posters from the ’97 Mars mission.

The company’s 3-D glasses made of paper go for as little as 30 cents each (with a minimum order of 50), while top-end plastic specs fetch $14.95.