It was the third time lucky for NASA’s Artemis 1 moon mission after its 32-story Space Launch System (SLS) rocket blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 12.17 pm India time.
The crewless three-week voyage inaugurates the US space agency's Artemis exploration programme 50 years after the Apollo moon mission. Its Orion capsule will make the journey around moon and back.
Liftoff came on the third attempt at launching the long-delayed, multibillion-dollar rocket, after 10 weeks beset by numerous technical mishaps, back-to-back hurricanes and two excursions trundling the spacecraft out of its hangar to the launch pad, news agency Reuters reported.
The Artemis I countdown climaxed with the rocket's four main R-25 engines and its twin solid-rocket boosters roaring to life, producing 8.8 million pounds of thrust that sent the spacecraft streaking skyward and lighting up the night sky over Florida's central Atlantic space coast, the report said.
The launch was earlier scheduled for November 14 but it had to be postponed because of tropical storm Nicole.
Dubbed Artemis I, the mission marks the first flight of the SLS rocket and the Orion capsule together built by Boeing and Lockheed Martin Corp, respectively, under contract with NASA, Reuters said.
The capsule is expected to splash down at sea on December 11.
If the mission succeeds, a crewed Artemis II flight around the moon and back could come as early as 2024, followed within a few more years by the program's first lunar landing of astronauts, one of them a woman, with Artemis III, the Reuters report said.
Crowds gathered outside NASA centers in Houston and Huntsville, Alabama, to watch the spectacle on giant screens, according to a report by the Associated Press.
launch director
Charlie Blackwell-Thompson the launch director for the mission said "For the Artemis generation, this is for you", referring to people who were not born during the Apollo era.
The liftoff marked the start of NASA's Artemis lunar-exploration program, named after Apollo's mythological twin sister. The 322-foot (98-meter) 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.
"There's a fair amount of risk with this particular initial flight test" said mission manager Mike Sarafin. Ultimately, NASA hopes to establish a base on the moon and send astronauts to Mars by the late 2030s or early 2040s according to AP's report.