NASA heads back to moon with Artemis I launch

Fifty years after the final Apollo moon mission, NASA has embarked on a crucial first step toward returning astronauts to the lunar surface.

Fifty years after the final Apollo moon mission, NASA has embarked on a crucial first step toward returning astronauts to the lunar surface.

The agency launched its new megarocket and space capsule on a mission to the moon Wednesday in an uncrewed test flight known as Artemis I. The huge rocket blasted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 1:48 a.m. ET.

"[F]or the Artemis generation, this is for you," launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, the agency's first female launch director, said before she gave the go-ahead for liftoff.

The event was the long-awaited first liftoff of NASA’s Space Launch System, or SLS, a next-generation booster that the agency says is the “most powerful rocket in the world.” Atop the 322-foot-tall rocket was the gumdrop-shaped Orion capsule that will eventually carry astronauts to the moon.

Blackwell-Thompson told her team members in an address after the launch that their work will inspire future generations.

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/nasa-heads-back-moon-artemis-launch-rcna57290

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