LOST IN SPACE, STUMPED AT HOME

A large (and very expensive) American telecommunications satellite, launched Thursday night aboard a French Ariane rocket, floated away to parts unknown after it detached from the spacecraft outside the earth's atmosphere early today. The Telstar 402 satellite, owned by the American Telephone & Telegraph Co., was to provide telephone and television links in the U.S. and the Caribbean for 12 years. Now red-faced officials at Arianespace, a commercial offshoot of the European Space Agency, are scratching their heads. The Telstar could represent a $200 million loss, but nobody's sweating at AT&T: "It was substantially insured," spokeswomen Mona Williams told TIME Daily.