Gusting winter winds following a cold front that passed over the Cape during the afternoon tried the patience of the launch team, forcing them to wait for the unacceptable conditions to calm and allow the Atlas to blast off before the 84-minute launch window closed.

"I can't think of a better way to start off the millennium than to continue a string of 46 successful Atlas launches," Lt. Col. Tony Goins, commander of the 3rd Space Launch Squadron which is responsible for Atlas launches from the air station, said of the $280 million mission.

Program managers, however, won't declare the mission a complete success for about another week, during which time the DSCS satellite will be flown to its final orbit where its solar arrays and antenna will be deployed, and its systems put through an initial series of tests.

"I can't think of a better way to start off the millennium than to continue a string of 46 successful Atlas launches."

"It will be five days from launch before we're comfortable we have a good satellite in orbit," said Lt. Col. Terry Peterson, director of the DSCS Space Segment, Space and Missile Systems Center, at Los Angeles Air Force Base in California.

After about two months of testing and repositioning in its 22,300-mile- (35,888-kilometer-) high orbit over Earth's equator, the DSCS satellite will be declared operational and begin to serve the needs of a growing population of users that includes ground- and sea-based troops, the White House and the diplomatic corps.

Now in its third generation, this particular spacecraft is an improvement over previous satellites of this design in that it is the first of the new System Life Enhancement Program satellites built by Lockheed Martin Missiles and Space.

The new electronics adds "more power per channel, and that allows us to reach smaller antennas," Peterson said.

Now, antennas capable of using this satellite, and three others still to be launched, generally can be smaller -- as small as about three feet in diameter in certain cases. This helps military forces who do not have room in their airplanes or submarines for 40-foot-diameter dishes.

"The smaller the antenna they use, the more mobile they are," added Lt. Col. Patrick Rayermann, chief of the Defense Information Systems Network, which operates the satellites after the Space and Missile Systems Center finishes testing them in orbit.

With Thursday's launch there are now 11 of these satellites in orbit, but only five are required to have an operational constellation. One that was launched in 1982 will be retired, and five others will be used for training and to back up the operational satellites as needed.

The most recent DSCS launch from Cape Canaveral was in 1997.

The next launch scheduled this year at the Cape is the Space Shuttle Endeavour. It is expected to lift off from Kennedy Space Center no earlier than January 31. The following week there are two launches slated for Cape Canaveral: an Atlas on February 3 and a Delta on February 6.