CAPE CANAVERAL, U.S. (Reuters) -- NASA's towering next-generation moon rocket blasted off from Florida early on Wednesday on its debut flight, a crewless voyage inaugurating the U.S. space agency's Artemis exploration program 50 years after the final Apollo moon mission.
The 32-story Space Launch System (SLS) rocket surged off the launch pad from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral at 1:47 a.m. EST (0647 GMT), to send its Orion capsule on a three-week test journey around the moon and back without astronauts aboard.
