OGDEN — A crowd of teachers, students, school administrators and politicians gathered Thursday to witness the christening of the newest shuttle to be launched.

The shuttle proudly protrudes from the front of the new Odyssey Elementary School and Astro Camp, on the corner of 33rd and Washington in Ogden. The first floor houses a new magnet school, focusing on a science-based curriculum.

The second floor houses Astro Camp, a facility providing students with a variety of space- and science-related activities through interactive hands-on experiences as they simulate space missions.

Children in surrounding areas used to be bused to four different elementary schools.

They've never had a school of their own — but that's changed now.

"This is a school children will want to come to," said Ogden School District Superintendent Noel Zabriskie. "This is a place they can call home, and what a beautiful home it is."

Ed Douglas, Astro Camp director, said, "If you think it's good from the outside, wait until you see the inside. It's amazing."

The audience politely waited, listened to all the remarks made by officials who made the school possible and former U.S. Sen. Jake Garn, who was invited to share his experiences. Wearing one of the actual suits he wore when he went up into space in 1985 aboard the space shuttle Discovery, Garn told students to dream big.

"If little Jake Garn from Richfield, Utah, can go up into outer space, imagine what you can do," said Garn. "One of you may come back to this school someday and say what it was like to walk on Mars."

Following the speeches, Garn, Odyssey principal Charlotte Parry and two diminutive astronauts, Nicolas Ortega and Joana Robles, both 11, dressed in orange space suits, rode a cherry picker up to the nose of the shuttle.

Following a countdown, Parry announced, "We christen you S.S. Odyssey Elementary School." The astronauts smashed a bottle, and confetti fluttered to the ground.

"It's a very special day," said Robles, who will be attending Odyssey as a sixth-grader this year. "This is more than a regular school. I've been to Astro Camp since I was in kindergarten. I'm excited. I'd like to go up into space someday."

In addition to all the normal elementary school classrooms, the building houses the new Astro Camp facility, which includes a space shuttle simulator, a centrifuge training device called the "Newton Chair," a control room, shuttle cockpit and a room to suit up before carrying out a real-life mission to go out and repair one of the shuttle's solar panels.

"It's a shuttle," explained Douglas, the camp director, "but it's actually a big teaching tool."

Astro Camp will continue to serve as a day camp for students and an overnight camp during the summer.

"This is a great occasion," said Zabriskie. "A dream come true for many people, an out-of-this-world dream."

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E-mail: dramsay@desnews.com