If Lockheed Martin's Atlas 3 eventually blasts off this week, two video cameras mounted on the rocket's upper stage will provide the mission team with a thrilling rocket's-eye-view of the trip into space, including the Centaur stage separation and perhaps a view of Florida as the booster climbs into space.

The inaugural launch to put Europe's Eutelsat W 4 broadcasting satellite into orbit could come at 5:37 p.m. or a bit later Tuesday. A launch attempt Monday was scrubbed due to a balky computer.

A rocketcam showsNASA's Stardust soaring above Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, moments after launch on February 7, 1999.

When the comet-chasing Stardust spacecraft blasted off a year ago, a video camera on the Boeing Delta 2's second stage provided the mission team with a thrilling rocket's-eye-view of the trip into space, including the simultaneous separation of four solid-fuel boosters.

"It was like being at a football game," recalled Boeing program manager Kris Walsh, who watched the real-time video at Cape Canaveral, Florida. "Every time something showed like the solids coming off, there was just a big hurrah."

A Boeing Delta II carries the ill-fated Mars Polar Lander on its way, January 3, 1999.

John Pike of the Federation of American Scientists noted video cameras are pervasive, from catching speeding motorists to monitoring high-crime areas.

"If cops have cameras all over the place, surely rocket scientists can," Pike said. "Think about all the things that can go wrong with a launch vehicle or spacecraft. Being able to watch it happen is obviously a lot more illuminating than trying to guess by looking at some cryptic telemetry data."

The folks who launch spacecraft are putting video cameras on rockets more frequently — thanks to the cameras' decreasing size and cost, their usefulness for spotting problems and the "gee-whiz factor" for attracting clients.

Rockets have carried cameras as early as the 1890s, when they were used on German military reconnaissance experiments, said Frank H. Winter of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington.

When dozens of captured German V 2 rockets were launched at White Sands, New Mexico, from 1946 into the 1950s, at least one carried a black-and-white camera that photographed Earth's curvature. In the 1950s, cameras on Navy Aerobees snapped the first color photos and movies from ascending rockets, Winter said.

It's not astronauts strapped on their backs who get to enjoy the view provided by a video camera looking down from a rocket as it blasts off.

"My customers love it," said Boeing’s Walsh.

Orbital Sciences Corp. started using video cameras to monitor stage and fairing separations during the 1993 launch of a Pegasus rocket from a B 52 bomber, said program manager Bryan Baldwin.

The Pegasus, on its fourth launch, carried an Air Force satellite. A forward-looking camera on the second stage spotted a malfunction with one of the satellite's solar panels, which helped in working around the problem, Baldwin said.

Orbital spokesman Barron Beneski said a video camera on the belly of an L 1011 cargo jet now watches to make sure Pegasus' stabilizer fins sweep up and down during a test seconds before launch. When customers request it, a second video camera is attached to the Pegasus for a stunning view of the receding Earth.

Orbital, Boeing and Lockheed Martin use analog video cameras. Orbital prefers rugged, commercially available cameras to expensive space-qualified cameras, Baldwin said.

Walsh said Boeing followed Orbital’s lead and started placing cameras on Delta 2s in 1997, after one of nine strap-on boosters failed to separate during the 1995 launch of the Koreasat 1 communications satellite.

The second stage of an Orbital Sciences Pegasus rocket burning out high above the Earth.

Video cameras rode Delta 2s that launched NASA's Advanced Composition Explorer, the ill-fated Mars Climate Orbiter and Mars Polar Lander missions, the Far Ultraviolet Spectrographic Explorer (FUSE) and Stardust, Boeing spokesman Keith Takahashi said.

Walsh said upward-pointing cameras on the Delta 2s helped Boeing learn why fairing insulation blankets ripped during an Iridium satellite launch and showed excessive dust and debris during separation of the FUSE and Globalstar satellites from Delta 2 second stages. That prompted Boeing to improve cleaning procedures.

A camera also captured deployment of four Globalstar satellites from their dispenser, Walsh said.

After the Joint Air Force Academy/Weber State University Satellite (JAWSAT) was launched January 26 from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, six inexpensive digital cameras on JAWSAT took 50 photographs of the release of four smaller satellites. Problems with JAWSAT mean engineers may have to wait until July for the photos to be sent to Earth.

JAWSAT was the first science payload launched by a Minotaur rocket -- a hybrid vehicle made from two Pegasus stages mated to two stages from recycled a Minuteman 2 Intercontinental Ballistic Missile. The photos, which can be strung together to create short, jerky videos, should help "determine if the launch vehicle can put the payloads into orbit without damaging them," said engineering professor Jay Smith at Weber State in Ogden, Utah.

But there's no denying the impact of pictures.

Besides cameras' engineering value, "there is certainly a lot of PR in seeing images from an actual space event," Smith said. "It translates directly into funding dollars for the next mission."