Artemis 1: Most powerful rocket in history takes off for the moon 50 years after Apollo

Sejal Karia reports on the significance of NASA launching a new moon rocket.

Artemis 1, NASA's new moon rocket, blasted off on its debut flight with three test dummies aboard on Wednesday.

The space mission brings the US a step closer to putting astronauts back on the lunar surface for the first time since the end of the Apollo programme 50 years ago.

If all goes well during the three-week, make-or-break shakedown flight, the rocket will propel an empty crew capsule into a wide orbit around the moon.

Following this the capsule will then return to Earth with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, in December.

After years of delays and billions in cost overruns, the Space Launch System rocket thundered skyward, rising from Kennedy Space Centre on 8.8 million pounds of thrust and hitting 100 mph within seconds. The Orion capsule was perched on top, ready to bust out of Earth's orbit toward the moon not quite two hours into the flight.

Watch the moment Artemis 1 blasted off from the Kennedy Space Centre.

The moon-shot follows nearly three months of fuel leaks that kept the rocket bouncing between its hangar and the pad.

Forced back indoors by Hurricane Ian at the end of September, the rocket stood its ground outside as Nicole swept through last week with gusts of more than 80 mph.

Although the wind peeled away a 10-foot strip of caulking high up near the capsule, managers gave the green light for the launch.

NASA expected 15,000 to jam the launch site, with thousands more lining the beaches and roads outside the gates, to witness NASA’s long-awaited sequel to Project Apollo, when 12 astronauts walked on the moon from 1969 and 1972.

Crowds also gathered outside NASA centres in Houston and Huntsville, Alabama, to watch the spectacle on giant screens.

Cheers accompanied the rocket as it rode a huge trail of flame toward space, with a half-moon glowing brightly and buildings shaking as though hit by a major quake.

“For the Artemis generation, this is for you,” launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson called out, referring to all those born after Apollo.

The lift-off marked the start of NASA’s Artemis lunar-exploration programme, named after Apollo’s mythological twin sister. The space agency is aiming to send four astronauts around the moon on the next flight, in 2024, and land humans there as early as 2025.

“You have earned your place in history," Blackwell-Thompson told her team following lift-off.

"You’re part of a first. Doesn’t come along very often. Once in a career maybe. But we are all part of something incredibly special: the first launch of Artemis. The first step in returning our country to the moon and on to Mars.”

The 322-foot SLS is the most powerful rocket ever built by NASA, with more thrust than either the space shuttle or the mighty Saturn V that carried men to the moon.

A series of hydrogen fuel leaks plagued the summertime launch attempts as well as countdown tests.

A fresh leak erupted at a new location during Tuesday night's fuelling, but an emergency team managed to tighten the faulty valve on the pad. Then a US Space Force radar station went down, resulting in another scramble, this time to replace an ethernet switch.

Orion should reach the moon by Monday, more than 230,000 miles from Earth. After coming within 80 miles of the moon, the capsule will enter a far-flung orbit stretching about 40,000 miles beyond.

The $4.1 billion (£3.45bn) test flight is set to last 25 days, roughly the same as when crews will be aboard.

The space agency intends to push the spacecraft to its limits and uncover any problems before astronauts strap in. The mannequins - NASA calls them moonequins - are fitted with sensors to measure such things as vibration, acceleration and cosmic radiation.

"There’s a fair amount of risk with this particular initial flight test,” said mission manager Mike Sarafin.

The rocket was supposed to have made its dry run by 2017. Government watchdogs estimate NASA will have spent $93 billion (£78bn) on the project by 2025.

Ultimately, NASA hopes to establish a base on the moon and send astronauts to Mars by the late 2030s or early 2040s.

But many hurdles still need to be cleared. The Orion capsule will take astronauts only to lunar orbit, not the surface.

NASA has hired Elon Musk’s SpaceX to develop Starship, the 21st-century answer to Apollo's lunar lander.

Starship will carry astronauts back and forth between Orion and the lunar surface, at least on the first trip in 2025. The plan is to station Starship and eventually other companies' landers in orbit around the moon, ready for use whenever new Orion crews pull up.

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