"Hey, we did it!" said Pepe Lobo, launch commentator and director of TRW Inc.'s television launch coverage. TRW was involved in systems engineering of the OSP launch vehicle, so Lobo was especially pleased. "We know we've got a rocket that works."

Four tiny satellites and two space science experiments representing nearly a dozen military, academic, private and commercial interests were packed into the nosecone of the solid-fueled rocket and released as planned beginning 10 minutes after the launch into polar orbit.

Small cameras inside the nosecone area were to take pictures of the satellite deployment, in part to confirm the separation and also to help in the development of automated spacecraft docking techniques. The pictures will be beamed to Earth later during the mission.

Almost three hours after launch, the Air Force was not ready to declare the mission a complete success. However, all the data they had at that point indicated all went well.

"Everything looks pretty good," said Air Force spokesperson Lt. Colleen Lehne. "The early indication from NORAD is that five objects are in the orbit we intended. Based on that data, we're feeling pretty confident."

Ground controllers planned to continue studying information coming from the satellites and will observe their progress through the evening, but there is no reason to believe all is not well, Lehne said.

Assembled by Orbital Sciences Corp., under an Air Force contract, the Minotaur combines two stages of a retired Minuteman 2 intercontinental ballistic missile and two stages of Orbital's own Pegasus launch vehicle.

Minotaur is capable of lifting 750 pounds (340 kilograms) into a 450-mile- (724-kilometer-) high polar orbit, or about 1.5-times the cargo weight of a winged Pegasus XL rocket.

Normally the Pegasus is dropped from the belly of Orbital Sciences' L 1011 carrier jet, while the Minotaur takes off from the ground.

The Minuteman 2 missile parts used in Wednesday's launch were among some 350 missile stages retired following the signing with the former Soviet Union of the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks treaty (START).

The Air Force hopes to use up the missile inventory as a peaceful way to provide low-cost access to space for government-sponsored research.

Most of the launches will take place, as it did Wednesday for the first time, from a new Federal Aviation Administration-licensed commercial launch pad -- also known as Space Launch Complex 7 -- operated by Spaceport Systems International.

A launch attempt January 14 was thwarted twice in one night -- once, when an automatic launch sequence during the final two minutes of the countdown didn't work, and then later when battery power ran too low on the rocket's electronics.