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.

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...