After two failed attempts, NASA is launching its Orion capsule on a 25-day test flight around the moon as part of the ambitious Artemis program. Watch live:
NASA’s towering next-generation moon rocket blasted off from Florida early on Wednesday on its debut flight, a crewless voyage inaugurating the US space agency’s Artemis exploration program 50 years after the final Apollo moon mission.
Dubbed Artemis I, the mission marks the first flight of the space Launch System rocket and the Orion capsule together, built by Boeing and Lockheed Martin, respectively, under contract with NASA. Twelve astronauts walked on the moon during six Apollo missions from 1969 to 1972, the only spaceflights yet to place humans on the lunar surface. But Apollo, born of the Cold War-era US-Soviet space race, was less science-driven than Artemis.
Billed as the most powerful, complex rocket in the world, the SLS represents the biggest new vertical launch system NASA has built since the Saturn V of the Apollo era. The heat shield is designed to withstand re-entry friction expected to raise temperatures outside the capsule to nearly 2760 degrees.