France, April 2 -- Around 400,000 people gathered to watch NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, topped with the Orion crew capsule, lift off from Florida's Kennedy Space Centre at approximately 6:35pm local time.

"We have a beautiful moonrise. We're headed right at it," said Reid Wiseman, the commander of the mission, which includes two other American astronauts, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, and a Canadian, Jeremy Hansen.

If all goes according to plan, the astronauts will fly around the Moon and back, capturing new images and observations, while testing the craft and venturing further into space than any human before them.

The Artemis programme - the successor to NASA's Cold War-era Apollo project - aims to have astronauts lan...