NASA’s towering next-generation moon rocket took off from Florida early Wednesday on its maiden voyage, a crewless journey that kicks off the United States space agency’s Artemis exploration programme 50 years after the final Apollo moon mission.
At 1:47 a.m. EST (0647 GMT), the 32-story Space Launch System (SLS) rocket blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral to send its Orion capsule on a three-week test journey around the moon and back.
After 10 weeks tormented by several technical disasters, back-to-back hurricanes, and two trips trundling the spacecraft out of its hangar to the launch pad, the rocket lifted off on the third attempt.
The mission, dubbed Artemis I, represents the first flight of the SLS rocket and the Orion capsule, both manufactured under contract with NASA by Boeing Co and Lockheed Martin Corp.
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