NASA’s Artemis I was on course Wednesday for a crewless voyage around the moon and back hours after blasting off from Florida on its debut flight, half a century after the final lunar mission of the Apollo era. The 32-story-tall Space Launch System (SLS) rocket lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at 1:47am EST (12:17pm IST), piercing the blackness over Cape Canaveral with a reddish-orange tail of fire.
NASA’s huge next-generation rocketship was on course Wednesday for a crewless voyage around the moon and back hours after blasting off from Florida on its debut flight, half a century after the final lunar mission of the Apollo era.
The much-delayed launch kicked off Apollo’s successor program, Artemis, aimed at returning astronauts to the lunar surface this decade and establishing a sustainable base there as a stepping stone to future human exploration of Mars.
The 32-story-tall Space Launch System (SLS) rocket lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at 1:47am EST (12:17pm IST), piercing the blackness over Cape Canaveral with a reddish-orange tail of fire.
About 90 minutes after launch, the rocket’s upper stage successfully thrust the Orion capsule out of Earth orbit and on its trajectory to the moon, NASA announced.
Launchpad Drama
Liftoff came on the third attempt at launching the multibillion-dollar rocket, after 10 weeks beset by technical mishaps, back-to-back hurricanes and two excursions trundling the spacecraft out of its hangar to the launch pad.
About four hours before Wednesday’s blastoff, crews had to deal with a flurry of simultaneous issues, including a leaky fuel valve.
Quick work on the launch pad by a special team of technicians, who tightened down a loose connection well inside the “blast zone” demarcated around a nearly fully fueled rocket, was credited with saving the launch.
