CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Blasting off with a clandestine satellite onboard, an Atlas 2AS rocket successfully ended Cape Canaveral's 2000 launch season on Tuesday with a light show of fire and smoke that could be seen for miles along Florida's Atlantic coast.

A very public mission for the usually secretive National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) began at 9:47 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (02:47 Wednesday GMT) with the ignition of the Atlas rocket's first stage main engines and two of four solid rocket boosters.

A Lockheed Martin-built Atlas 2AS rocket lifts off from Cape Canaveral on Tuesday with a secret satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office aboard.

The Lockheed Martin-built Atlas launch vehicle slowly climbed into a star-filled sky, ignited its remaining two boosters and then quickly picked up speed as the rocket turned downrange while thousands of local residents, tourists and holiday shoppers looked on.

Appearing for a short time as the brightest star in the east, the Atlas soon disappeared from view on its way to deliver the NRO-designed satellite into its intended orbit. Spacecraft separation from the Centaur upper stage occurred 29 minutes after liftoff from Launch Complex 36.

NRO officials would not comment on the Atlas' cargo, but industry observers agree the spacecraft is a sophisticated data relay communications satellite, capable of receiving and passing on signals from other NRO spy satellites in Earth orbit.

Although no clever code name has surfaced for this particular payload, the spacecraft is believed to be a slimmed down version of a Satellite Data System spacecraft that was originally designed to fly -- and did -- on NASA Space Shuttles and Air Force Titan 4's.

Budget conscience NRO officials now procure their launch vehicles from the commercial marketplace and have turned to International Launch Services' (ILS) family of Atlas 2 and Atlas 3 rockets to fly several missions. Tuesday's launch fulfilled the second NRO contract for ILS.

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The mission itself, however, was nicknamed "The Great Bear" in honor of the late Don Potter -- a former Central Intelligence Agency employee assigned to the NRO as an engineer -- who was a strong supporter of an NRO community effort called the Cub Run Partners in Education Program, volunteering at Cub Run Elementary School in Centreville, Va.

"The Great Bear" logo appears as a decal on the nosecone of an Atlas rocket that launched Dec. 5, 2000 from Cape Canaveral.

A bear logo was painted on the rocket's nose cone, designed in a contest that generated 700 entries and won by 13-year-old Samantha Wingo of Stone Middle School in Centreville, Va., who was present at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station for the launch.

According to a statement about the dedication from ILS: "The Ursa Major constellation, the Great Bear, was selected as the theme for the design because it complemented Cub Run's mascot, the bear cub, and symbolized Dan's love and support for the students and the Partners in Education Program."

The Atlas launch team also dedicated the mission to the late Jennifer Bertuzzi, a flight software engineer who had worked on this particular mission for five years, said launch commentator Don Spencer.

Tuesday's launch from the Cape was the last scheduled shot from the Space Coast for the year 2000. In all there were 19 launches from the Cape, a number that includes the five shuttle missions flown from the Kennedy Space Center.

The next rocket to fly from the Cape is scheduled to blast off on January 18 when shuttle Atlantis is to bring the Destiny science module up to the International Space Station. That will be followed 12 days later by an Air Force Delta 2 carrying a Navstar Global Positioning System satellite.

The next Atlas targeted to fly is in May.