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LOS ANGELES (AP) — After several weather delays, NASA on Saturday launched a helium balloon carrying a saucer-shaped vehicle high in Earth's atmosphere to test technology that could be used to land on Mars.

Since the twin Viking spacecraft landed on the red planet in 1976, NASA has relied on the same parachute design to slow landers and rovers after piercing through the thin Martian atmosphere.

The $150 million experimental flight tests a novel vehicle and a giant parachute designed to deliver heavier spacecraft and eventually astronauts.

Viewers around the world with an Internet connection followed portions of the mission in real time thanks to telescopic cameras on the ground. Later in the mission, cameras on board the vehicle should turn on and beam back low-resolution footage.

After taking off at 11:40 a.m. from the Pacific Missile Range Facility on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, the balloon boosted the disc-shaped vehicle over the Pacific. Its rocket motor should then ignite, carrying the vehicle to 34 miles high at supersonic speeds.

The environment this high up is similar to the thin Martian atmosphere. As the vehicle prepares to drop back the Earth, a tube around it should expand like a Hawaiian puffer fish, creating atmospheric drag to dramatically slow it down from Mach 4, or four times the speed of sound.

Then the parachute should unfurl and guide the vehicle to an ocean splashdown. At 110 feet in diameter, the parachute is twice as big as the one that carried the 1-ton Curiosity rover through the Martian atmosphere in 2011.

The test was postponed six times because of high winds. Winds need to be calm so that the balloon doesn't stray into no-fly zones.

Engineers planned to analyze the data and conduct several more flights next year before deciding whether to fly the vehicle and parachute on a future Mars mission.

"We want to test them here where it's cheaper before we send it to Mars to make sure that it's going to work there," project manager Mark Adler of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory said during a pre-launch news conference in Kauai in early June.

The technology envelope needs to be pushed or else humanity won't be able to fly beyond the International Space Station in low-Earth orbit, said Michael Gazarik, head of space technology at NASA headquarters.

Technology development "is the surest path to Mars," Gazarik said at the briefing.

ROGERS, Ark. (AP) — Michelle Wie shot her second straight 5-under 66 on Saturday to take a two-shot lead in the suspended second round of the NW Arkansas Championship.

Coming off a victory Sunday in the U.S. Women's Open at Pinehurst, Wie had six birdies and a bogey in her morning round at Pinnacle Country Club.

So Yeon Ryu, paired with Wie, was second after her second straight 67.

Seventy-two players were unable to finish the round because of afternoon thunderstorms.

Suzann Pettersen, Chella Choi and Line Vedel were three strokes back, and top-ranked and local favorite Stacy Lewis was four shots behind at 6 under.

Pettersen had a 67, Choi shot 65, and Vedel had five holes left.

Lewis birdied four of her first eight holes and finished with a 12-foot birdie putt on No. 9 for a 67. First-round leader Alena Sharp was 4 under overall after 15 holes.

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — Artists and diplomats declared a new century of peace and unity in Europe on Saturday in the city where the first two shots of World War I were fired exactly 100 years ago.

On June 28, 1914, the Austro-Hungarian crown prince Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo, where he had come to inspect his occupying troops in the empire's eastern province.

The shots fired by Serb teenager Gavrilo Princip sparked the Great War, which was followed decades later by a second world conflict. Together the two wars cost some 80 million European their lives, ended four empires — including the Austro-Hungarian — and changed the world forever.

Visiting the assassination site Saturday, Sarajevan Davud Bajramovic, 67, said that in order to hold a second of silence for every person killed just during WWI in Europe, "we would have to stand silently for two years."

A century later, Sarajevans again crowded the same street along the river where Princip fired his shots. And the Austrians were also back, but this time with music instead of military: The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra was scheduled to perform works of European composers reflecting the century's catastrophic events and conclude with a symbol of unity in Europe — the joint European hymn, Beethoven's "Ode of Joy."

The orchestra wanted to pay tribute to the history of Sarajevo, a place where religions meet, said the first violinist, Clemens Hellberg.

Austrian President Heinz Fischer said Europeans "have learnt that no problem can be solved by war."

The continent's violent century started in Sarajevo and ended in Sarajevo with the 1992-95 war that took 100,000 Bosnian lives.

"If anything good can be found in this repeating evil, it's more wisdom and readiness to build peace and achieve peace after a century of wars," said Bosnia's president, Bakir Izetbegovic.

The splurge of centennial concerts, speeches, lectures and exhibitions on Saturday were mostly focused on creating lasting peace and promoting unity in a country that is still struggling with similar divisions as it did 100 years ago. The rift was manifested by the Serbs marking the centennial by themselves in the part of Bosnia they control, where a performance re-enacted the assassination.

As Austrian conductor Franz Welser-Moest raised his baton in Sarajevo, an actor playing Gavrilo Princip descending from heaven on angel's wings, raised his pistol in the eastern town of Visegrad, at the border to Serbia, to kill Franz Ferdinand again in a spectacular performance designed for the occasion.

For the Serbs, Princip was a hero who saw Bosnia as part of the Serb national territory at a time when the country was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His shots were a chance for them to include Bosnia into the neighboring Serbian kingdom — the same idea that inspired the Serbs in 1992 to fight the decision by Muslim Bosnians and Catholic Croats to declare the former republic of Bosnia independent when Serb-dominated Yugoslavia fell apart. Their desire is still to include the part of Bosnia they control into neighboring Serbia. Serbia itself flirts with both — the EU opposed unification with the Bosnian Serbs and its own EU membership candidacy.

Serbian crown prince Aleksandar Karadjordjevic, Serbian prime minister Aleksandar Vucic, President Tomislav Nikolic and the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Irinej attended the ceremony in Visegrad where Serbian flags flew and the Serbian anthem was played although the town is in Bosnia.

Vucic said he was proud because in Visegrad "the Serbs are protecting their good reputation."

In Sarajevo, French philosopher and writer Bernard-Henry Levy said Europe owes Bosnia because it "stood idly by" as Serb nationalists bombed besieged multiethnic Sarajevo for 3.5 years. Levy started a petition Saturday among European intellectuals requesting the EU to "pay Bosnia back" by promptly giving it full membership in the European Union because it defended European values by itself 20 years ago.

"What Europe will gain from Bosnia is part of its spirit, part of its soul," he said, referring to efforts of some Bosnians to preserve the multiethnic character of the country and resist national division.

Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic, a former hard-line nationalist-turned pro-EU reformer, previously said he considered going to Sarajevo for the centennial but gave up after realizing he would have to stand beside a plaque depicting Serbs as criminals.

Indeed, a plaque at the entrance of the recently reconstructed Sarajevo National Library building where the concert was taking place states "Serb criminals" had set the library ablaze in 1992 along with its two million books, magazines and manuscripts.

Karl von Habsburg, the grandson of the last Austrian emperor Charles I, was also attending the ceremonies.

"We need united Europe and one thing is for sure: Europe will never be complete without Bosnia," he stated.