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. About 90 minutes after launch, the rocket's upper stage fired thrusters for a "trans-lunar injection" burn propelling Orion out of Earth orbit on course for the moon. That put the capsule on track for a 25-day flight that will bring it to within 60 miles (97 km) of the lunar surface before sailing ...
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