Astronauts reach safe orbit in Nasa’s Moon mission

Nasa's crew of astronauts launched to space and reached a stable orbit, kicking off a landmark journey that will take them closer to the lunar surface than anyone has been in more than 50 years.

- Bloomberg

The Artemis II crewed lunar mission lifts off from Pad 39B at Kennedy Space Centre in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Wednesday.

(AFP)

The initial phase of the 10-day mission to lap the moon, a multi-billion-dollar feat about a decade in the making, clears a major hurdle for Nasa and its legacy aerospace contractors as the agency works to establish a base on the lunar surface and ultimately venture to Mars.

The crew's Lockheed Martin Corp-built Orion capsule, stacked on the shoulders of Boeing Co.'s Space Launch System rocket, thundered off the launchpad at 6:35pm local time at Kennedy Space Centre in Florida.