After years of preparation and a few last-minute delays, the Swift satellite team was fine with waiting six extra minutes before seeing all their hard work pay off.

At 12:16 p.m. on Saturday, after a six-minute extension to a routine hold in the countdown, the Boeing Delta II Rocket carrying the NASA-funded Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Explorer leapt from the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla.

John Nousek, professor of astronomy and astrophysics and mission director at Penn State, was at the space center for the launch of the new space observatory.

The entire launch crew celebrated with "unbridled enthusiasm," hugging and cheering as the rocket soared into the blue sky, Nousek said.

"We were very fortunate to have the weather clear up," he said. "It was some of the best coverage of a Delta rocket launch that [NASA has] had."

More than 1,000 miles away, cheers echoed from the Swift Mission Operations Center here at Penn State, located in a plain-looking office building a few miles off campus.

Christopher Bessette (graduate-aerospace engineering), the flight operations team lead engineer, said before the launch that everyone was "very excited; some people here have been looking forward to this day for years."

Swift's launch had been delayed by weeks due to hurricanes. Then, equipment concerns with the rocket last week pushed the launch back by several more days.

"It's a wonderful feeling," said Tom Taylor, the project's manager for operations at Penn State up until the launch.

As the excitement eventually wore off, the scientists began to report to their work stations. "I've got to get to work now" was heard all around the control room.

The Swift satellite will study gamma-ray bursts, which are incredibly powerful explosions from billions of light-years away that give off bright flashes of gamma radiation.

Swift's mission is scheduled for two years, said Tim Gehringer, project manager with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, based outside Washington, D.C., which has been greatly involved with the Swift project.

Swift's orbit would allow it to remain functional for almost eight years, Gehringer added.

The only two things that would cause Swift to stop working after the two-year period are the battery dying and solar cycles creating drag on the satellite and causing it to fall back down to Earth, he said.

In the next two years, Swift will use its three telescopes to study gamma-ray bursts and determine the cause or causes of these little-understood explosions, Nousek said.

During the first few weeks that the satellite is in orbit, it will slowly be turning on and fine-tuning the instruments on board, he said.

Margaret Chester, the mission operation lead scientist, said the satellite should be up and running in its fully automated mode in about four months.

Pictures from the launch can be seen at www.live.psu.edu.