NASA’s next-generation Artemis rocket lifts off on test flight to moon

NASA's towering next-generation moon rocket blasted off from Florida early on Wednesday on its debut flight, a crewless voyage inaugurating the U.S. space agency's Artemis exploration program 50 years after the final Apollo moon mission.

The 32-story Space Launch System (SLS) rocket surged off the launch pad from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral at 1:47 a.m. EST (0647 GMT), to send its Orion capsule on a three-week test journey around the moon and back without astronauts aboard.

Liftoff came on the third attempt at launching the long-delayed, multibillion-dollar rocket, after 10 weeks beset by numerous technical mishaps, back-to-back hurricanes and two excursions trundling the spacecraft out of its hangar to the launch pad.

Wednesday's launch was not without its own drama. A three-man "red team" was scrambled out to the launch pad in the final hours of the countdown to tighten bolts on a loose connection identified as the source of a potentially flight-thwarting fuel leak.

Liftoff came on the third attempt at launching the long-delayed, multibillion-dollar rocket, after 10 weeks beset by numerous technical mishaps, back-to-back hurricanes and two excursions trundling the spacecraft out of its hangar to the launch pad.

Wednesday's launch was not without its own drama. A three-man "red team" was scrambled out to the launch pad in the final hours of the countdown to tighten bolts on a loose connection identified as the source of a potentially flight-thwarting fuel leak. (Reuters)