Four astronauts blasted off Wednesday in the first crewed voyage around the moon in more than 50 years. The Artemis II mission brings the United States closer to its goal of returning humans to the Moon this decade as it competes with China in a new space race.
Around 400,000 people gathered to watch NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, topped with the Orion crew capsule, lift off from Florida's Kennedy Space Centre at approximately 6:35pm local time.
"We have a beautiful moonrise. We're headed right at it," said Reid Wiseman, the commander of the mission, which includes two other American astronauts, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, and a Canadian, Jeremy Hansen.
If all goes according to plan, the astronauts will fly around the Moon and back, capturing new images and observations, while testing the craft and venturing further into space than any human before them.
The Artemis programme – the successor to NASA's Cold War-era Apollo project – aims to have astronauts land on the Moon’s south pole by 2028, to beat the crewed mission that China hopes to send to the region as early as 2030.
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Minutes before lift-off, Hansen told mission control in Houston: "This is Jeremy, we are going for all humanity."
Artemis II was meant to take off as early as February after years of delays and massive cost overruns, but it was delayed by technical setbacks.
The astronauts are "safe, they're secure, and they're in great spirits", said NASA administrator Jared Isaacman.
The launch is an opening act for subsequent missions that would include construction of a Moon base to support what Isaacman called the "enduring presence we're trying to create on the surface".
The launch was the inaugural crewed flight for the SLS, a new rocket designed to allow repeated returns to the Moon to build up a long-term US presence – and serve as a stepping stone to eventual missions to Mars.
(with newswires)
