American Notes Cape Canaveral

For a change, the mood at the Kennedy Space Center was upbeat last Friday as a ; Delta rocket carrying a secret military payload for the Star Wars space defense program lifted off flawlessly at 11:08 a.m. "We feel we are back in the groove," said NASA's Delta project manager William Russell. The flight was Delta's first since a rocket was destroyed after lift-off in May. And it was only the second successful major U.S. launch of any kind in six attempts, starting with January's space shuttle Challenger disaster.

The rocket reportedly carried two satellites on a dual-purpose mission: to detect and track an Aries rocket launched an hour and a half later from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, and to test a system for destroying enemy satellites. Both tests were a success, the Pentagon said.