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 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.