Artemis mission takes flight in historic leap for Nasa's moon programme

Nasa’s next-generation rocketship was on course Wednesday for a crewless voyage around the moon and back, launched from Florida on its debut flight half a century after the final lunar mission of the Apollo era.

The much-delayed launch kicked off Apollo's successor program, Artemis, aimed at returning astronauts to the lunar surface this decade and establishing a sustainable base there as a stepping stone to future human exploration of Mars.

The 32-story-tall Space Launch System SLS) rocket blasted off from Nasa’s Kennedy Space Center at 1:47 am EST 0647 GMT), piercing the blackness over Cape Canaveral with a reddish-orange tail of fire.

About 90 minutes after launch, the rocket's upper stage successfully thrust the Orion capsule out of Earth orbit and on its trajectory to the moon, Nasa announced.

“Today, we got to witness the world’s most powerful rocket take the Earth by its edges... And it was quite a sight,” Artemis mission manager Mike Sarafin told a post-launch Nasa briefing.