AFP UK

Turtle eggs in Punta Chame are sold for between 75 cents and $1 each

The sea turtles of Punta Chame, a peninsula of Panama that juts into the Pacific Ocean, face an existential threat similar to the rhino and pangolin: human superstition.

The eggs of the protected olive ridley turtle, illegally harvested from the beach, are sold door to door in town for 75 cents to $1 each for their purported aphrodisiac qualities.

“Especially men think that by eating turtle eggs they will have more sexual pleasure,” said Jorge Padilla, a conservationist with the NGO Fundacion Tortuguias which collects and hatches the precious eggs.

“The eggs won’t help you. They are not an aphrodisiac,” he insisted.

The olive ridley (Lepidochelys olivacea) is listed as “vulnerable” on the Red List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, with its numbers declining.

Its survival relies heavily on people like Padilla, who with village volunteers collect freshly laid eggs and bury them in sand at the nursery.

Hundreds hatch here each year between July and February. Within hours they are brought to the beach and released near the water’s edge by volunteers who look on with parent-like pride as the tiny critters make a frantic dash for the ocean.

“We cannot just put them (in the water) because they have to go through a process called ‘imprinting’ (along the beach) that will bring them back in 18-20 years to the same beach where they were born” to lay their own eggs.

– Used for combs, clothes –

Day and night, Padilla patrols the beach to scare off poachers.

Other threats include stray dogs roaming the beaches for food, and eagles.

Padilla repels the dogs but leaves the eagles as they are natural turtle predators and part of the circle of life.

The turtles also end up as by-catch from fishing, and face threats to their nesting beaches from human encroachment and climate change.

“There are many threats to sea turtles, both in the Pacific and in the Caribbean: illegal egg harvesting, overconsumption of their meat, their shells… They are used for combs… clothing,” said Padilla.

Marine turtles and their uncertain fate are on the agenda of a global wildlife summit taking place in Panama City, not far from Punta Chame with its 500 human inhabitants.

The gathering of countries under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) will consider ways to combat egg theft and trafficking.

A working document on the CITES website states “the illegal harvest and trade continues to threaten marine turtles.”

More than 600 people died in Nigeria's devastating floods

Heavy rains behind floods that killed over 600 people in Nigeria this year were about 80 times likelier because of human-induced climate change, scientists reported Wednesday.

The floods mainly struck Nigeria but also Niger, Chad and neighbouring countries, displacing over 1.4 million people and devastating homes and farmland in a region already vulnerable to food insecurity.

Researchers from the World Weather Attribution (WWA) consortium said in a study that the floods — among the deadliest on record in the region — were directly linked to human activity that is exacerbating climate change.

They matched long-term data on climate — which shows the planet has warmed by about 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit) since 1800 as carbon emissions have risen — against weather events.

The heavy rainfall that sparked the floods was 80 times likelier because of “human-caused climate change,” according to their findings. 

In addition, “this year’s rainy season was 20 percent wetter than it would have been without the influence of climate change,” they said. 

“The influence of climate change means the prolonged rain that led to the floods is no longer a rare event,” the study found. 

“The above-average rain over the wet season now has approximately a one in 10 chance of happening each year; without human activities it would have been an extremely rare event.” 

Over 600 people were killed in Nigeria alone because of the floods from June to October this year, and nearly 200 in Niger and 22 in Chad.

– ‘Real and present problem’ – 

The report comes as COP27 climate talks are underway in Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh, where developing nations are demanding rich polluters pay for climate-change linked calamities. 

Africa is home to some of the countries least responsible for carbon emissions but hardest hit by an onslaught of weather extremes, with the Horn of Africa currently in the grips of a severe drought.

“This is a real and present problem, and it’s particularly the poorest countries that are getting hit very hard. So it’s clear that solutions are needed,” Maarten van Aalst, director of the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, said at a WWA press conference. 

In a separate WWA study also released Wednesday, researchers examined a 2021 drought that reduced crop production in Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria and Chad that contributed to a food crisis this year. 

The study failed to find concrete climate change links, because of “a lack of reliable weather station data”, but showed “that even small shifts in rainfall can have major effects in the region”. 

It added that high global food prices deepened the crisis, along with the Russian invasion of Ukraine which disrupted deliveries of key fertilisers to Africa. 

The WWA publishes rapid-response reports following extreme climate events.

Their studies are not peer-reviewed, a process that can take months, but are widely backed by scientists. 

Despite a mixed record on the environment and jail time in his resume, leftist Lula drew crowds curious to hear his promises to protect the Amazon rainforest

Showered with applause and chants of “Lula!”, Brazilian president-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva made a splash at a UN climate conference in Egypt Wednesday, his first foreign trip since his election.

Despite a mixed record on the environment and jail time in his resume, the 77-year-old leftist politician drew crowds curious to hear his promises to protect the Amazon rainforest.

“Brazil is back,” Lula said repeatedly, words his supporters sang during his speech at the COP27 conference in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

Hundreds of people packed rooms at two separate events he attended, asking him for selfies and shouting his name.

UN security shut the doors when the room filled for his speech, leaving a disappointed crowd outside. 

Expectations are high for Lula to protect the Amazon after rampant deforestation seen under far-right President Jair Bolsonaro.

At COP27, Lula vowed to fight deforestation, offered to host UN climate talks in the Amazon region in 2025, and pledged to make Brazil a leader in the global battle against climate change again. 

“Lula represents a political change for Latin America,” said Adrian Martinez Blanco, who is attending the climate conference for Costa Rican NGO La Ruta del Clima.

“It is a shift towards the protection of the planet, the Amazon, human rights, the rights of Indigenous people,” he said.

– ‘Back into the fold’ –

Lula, who was president from 2003 to 2010, pulled off a huge political comeback to defeat Bolsonaro.

He left office as a blue-collar hero who presided over a commodity-fuelled economic boom that helped lift 30 million people out of poverty.

But he then became mired in a massive corruption scandal and served more than 18 months in prison from 2018. His conviction was later overturned.

“It’s very interesting to listen to him first hand and understand how he captures so much love from his people — while also not necessarily being the best for the country,” said Sofya Levitina, a student at the University of Connecticut, referring to the corruption scandal.

Melissa Yokoe Ashbaugh, who is studying at the same US university, said her “impression of the excitement is that he represents coming back around from a populous right-wing wave (that is) anti-environment”.

“It’s sort of the hope of people who are engaged in this sort of climate action space that globally, administrations like his will represent those interests,” she said.

Brazilian climate campaigner Mariana Paoli, who leads global advocacy at Christian Aid, said Brazil had become a “pariah state” under Bolsonaro when it came to climate policy.

“It’s so good to see Lula bringing Brazil back into the fold,” she said in a statement.

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest has been rampant in recent years

UN climate talks got a boost Wednesday as Brazilian president-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva vowed to fight Amazon deforestation and global leaders reaffirmed key pledges.

While G20 leaders meeting in Indonesia issued a final communique committing to pursue the more ambitious limits on global heating, action on the sidelines of fraught COP27 negotiations in Egypt generated momentum at the UN climate conference.

Lula kicked off COP27 events Wednesday with a call to host the 2025 climate talks in the Amazon region, in his first international trip since defeating outgoing far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, who presided over years of rampant Amazon deforestation.

“I am here to say to all of you that Brazil is back in the world,” said Lula as he received a jubilant welcome from hundreds of people at an Amazon region pavilion in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

“We will put up a very strong fight against illegal deforestation,” he said, announcing the creation of an Indigenous people’s ministry to protect the vast region’s vulnerable communities.

“There is no climate security for the world without a protected Amazon,” Lula said later in a speech.

Lula arrived in Egypt on Tuesday and went straight into climate diplomacy, with meetings with US envoy John Kerry and China’s Xie Zhenhua.

– Kerry ‘pleased’ –

Kerry told a COP27 biodiversity panel on Wednesday that he was “really encouraged” by Lula’s pledge to protect the Amazon, and that the United States would work with other nations to help protect the rainforest.

Under Bolsonaro, a staunch ally of agribusiness, average annual deforestation increased 75 percent compared with the previous decade.

“We don’t need to cause deforestation of even one metre of the Amazon to continue being one of the biggest food producers in the world,” Lula said.

In another boost to the UN climate process, the final communique from world leaders meeting at the Group of 20 talks in Bali, Indonesia, reaffirmed a promise to “pursue efforts” to curb global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

The G20 document also addresses the most contentious issue at COP27, as leaders urged “progress” on “loss and damage” — the costs of climate impacts already being felt — though without saying which approach they favoured.

Developing nations are demanding the creation of a loss and damage fund, through which rich polluters would compensate them for the destruction caused by climate-linked natural disasters.

But the United States and the European Union have suggested using existing channels for climate finance instead of creating a new one.

The G20 meeting was also the stage of a crucial meeting between US President Joe Biden and China’s Xi Jinping, where the two leaders agreed to resume their climate cooperation.

Ani Dasgupta, head of the World Resources Institute, said positive signals from leaders at the G20 “should put wind in the sails” of negotiators in Egypt.

In another COP27 announcement, the EU said it would dedicate more than $1 billion in climate funding to help countries in Africa boost their resilience in the face of the accelerating impact of global warming.

– Climate leadership –

In his speech, however, Lula took a dig at developed countries for failing to fulfil a pledge to provide $100 billion in aid annually from 2020 for developing nations to green their economies and adapt to future impacts.

“I’m also back to demand what was promised” at past climate talks, he said. 

The president-elect, who previously served from 2003 to 2010, threw his weight behind the idea of a climate impacts compensation fund.

“We very urgently need financial mechanisms to remedy losses and damages caused by climate change,” said Lula, who made a spectacular political comeback after serving jail time for corruption.

Latin America’s most populous country grew more isolated under Bolsonaro, analysts say, in part due to his permissive policies towards deforestation and exploitation of the Amazon, the preservation of which is seen as critical to fighting global warming.

Brazil is home to 60 percent of the Amazon, which spans eight countries and acts as a massive sink for carbon emissions.

The incoming Lula administration wants the United States to contribute to the Amazon Fund, considered one of the main tools to reduce deforestation in the planet’s biggest tropical forest.

Following Lula’s victory, the fund’s main contributors, Norway and Germany, announced they would participate again, after freezing aid in 2019 in the wake of Bolsonaro’s election.

The colourful clouds are only visible in infrared light, so had never been seen before being captured by the James Webb Space Telescope

The James Webb Space Telescope unveiled its latest image of celestial majesty on Wednesday, an ethereal hourglass of orange and blue dust being shot out from a newly forming star at its centre.

The colourful clouds are only visible in infrared light, so had never been seen before being captured by Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), NASA and the European Space Agency said in a statement.

The very young star, known as protostar L1527, is hidden in darkness by the edge of a rotating disk of gas at the neck of the hourglass. 

However light spills out from the top and bottom of the disk, lighting up the hourglass-shaped clouds.

The clouds are created by material ejected from the star colliding with surrounding matter, the statement said. The dust is thinnest in the blue sections and thickest in the orange parts, it added.

The protostar, which is just 100,000 years old and at the earliest stage of star formation, is not yet able to generate its own energy.

The surrounding black disk, which is around the size of our solar system, will feed material to the protostar until it eventually reaches “the threshold for nuclear fusion to begin,” the statement said.

“Ultimately, this view of L1527 provides a window into what our Sun and solar system looked like in their infancy,” it added.

The protostar is located in the Taurus molecular cloud, a stellar nursery home to hundreds of nearly formed stars around 430 light years from Earth.

Operational since July, Webb is the most powerful space telescope ever built, and has already unleashed a raft of unprecedented data as well as stunning images. Scientists are hopeful it will herald a new era of discovery.

One of the main goals for the $10-billion telescope is to study the life cycle of stars. Another main research focus is on exoplanets, planets outside Earth’s solar system.

On a bright winter's day, they fished out tires, chairs, mobile phones, cutlery, CDs, and a broom

On the Greek island of Naxos, two divers reeled in not the catch of the day but a jumble of cable, rope, fishing nets and old clothes from the seafloor.

They are part of a dozen-strong team from Aegean Rebreath, marine conservationists who for the past five years have sought to preserve the azure waters that attract millions of holidaymakers every summer. 

On a bright winter’s day, they fished out tires, chairs, mobile phones, cutlery, CDs, and a broom, alongside dozens of cans and bottles. 

“We have extracted more than a ton of marine waste from the port (in two days),” said George Sarelakos, the group’s co-founder and head.

“The other side of the harbour is a real dumping ground,” said Sarelakos, 44. 

Greece’s struggle with marine pollution is not new.

In 2019, actor Leonardo DiCaprio said in an Instagram post that there were plastic bags, toilet seats and hundreds of discarded fishing nets “stuck to the seabed” of nearby Andros island.

– ‘Lack the awareness’ –

On a wooden boat moored off Naxos, a wrinkled fisherman carefully cleaned a yellow net clasped between his toes. 

Discarded fishing nets are a key threat to marine wildlife.

With limited space on their small craft, fishermen also throw back any waste they catch in their nets said Aegean Rebreath volunteer diver Theodora Francis.

Fishermen “lack the awareness of environmental issues,” said Francis, 29, an occupational therapist based near Athens. 

Naxos mayor Dimitrios Lianos said fishermen should do more to “protect the marine environment because it is their livelihood”.

Mass tourism to Greece, especially the Cyclades, also contribute significantly to marine pollution.

Tourism accounts for a quarter of Greece’s national output and receives leeway when it comes to the application of stringent regulations.

“Many measures… in European (environmental) directives are unfortunately not applied in Greece,” says Achilleas Plitharas, head of plastic waste reduction at the World Wildlife Fund’s (WWF) Greece branch.

Greece produces some 700,000 tons of plastic waste per year, according to a 2019 study by WWF which says a quarter of that is down to summer tourists. 

The country accounts for 2.5 percent of Mediterranean basin plastic waste compared to 21.1 percent produced by Italy, and 15.1 percent by France, the study showed.

“Some 25 percent of plastic waste generation (in Greece) is due to the influx of tourists during the summer,” Plitharas told AFP.

An environmental tax on plastic bags introduced in 2018, currently set at 0.09 euros, has not made a huge difference.

– ‘We must take care’ –

Back on Naxos, Francis struggled to remove her wetsuit after two hours of trawling the popular Cycladic island’s harbour seabed.

The Aegean Rebreath team made a weekend stop at Naxos after trips to Zakynthos and Heraklion, Crete, diving to depths of more than 40 metres (131 feet) where necessary.

They will soon carry out a final mission in Corfu before packing away their oxygen tanks and fins for winter. 

In 75 clean-up operations thus far, the group’s 300 or so volunteer divers have recovered 1,700 tires, 21 tonnes of fishing nets, 90,000 plastic bottles and giant sacks of plastic bags, one of the main contaminants.

“We purposely spread out on the dock everything we bring up. That’s the only way people can see the extent of the problem,” said Francis. 

Their work has made an impression on Francois and Salome, a French couple permanently based on Naxos, who were helping out.

“It’s a shock to see all these cans,” said Salome, 32.

She had on gloves and helped to pick apart the plastic and metal scraps which the NGO will then log on a database.

“Greece has very beautiful nature, very diversified”, added Francois.

“This country is magnificent. We must take care of it.” 

Up to their necks: West African giraffes are threatened by habitat loss

Conservationists in Niger said on Wednesday they had transferred threatened West African giraffes to a new home 600 kilometres (375 miles) away.

One of nine giraffe sub-species, the West African giraffe is native to the semi-arid Sahel, distinguishable from its cousins by its light-coloured spots.

Giraffes in the Koure region in the southwest of the vast country are at threat from desertification and farming, which are destroying their habitat.

On Friday, “four female giraffes were captured” in Koure “and have already arrived in Gabedji,” a huge nature reserve in central southern Niger, the forestry and water service said.

The giraffes were transported in specially adapted trucks and “everything went well,” said a senior official, Commander Lamine Saidou.

The operation was carried out with the help of an NGO called the Sahara Conservation Fund (SCF).

The transfer is the second since November 2018, when seven female and three male giraffes in Koure made the trek to Gabedji, in the Maradi region.

Three baby giraffes were born in Gabedji this year alone, the environment ministry says.

Pain-staking efforts to save the West African giraffe seem to be bearing fruit.

The sub-species once ranged from Senegal to Lake Chad, but in 1996 there were just 49 individuals left.

This rose to 697 in 2017, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which in 2018 downgraded the giraffes’ status from “endangered” to “vulnerable.”

After four failed rainy seasons, Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia are in the worst drought for 40 years: a mother cradles her child suffering from severe malnutrition a hospital in the Somali city of Baidoa on November 9

As COP27 delegates in Egypt debate planet-heating emissions, the climate crisis is exacerbating devastating hunger across several African nations and will worsen further without urgent action, the UN said Wednesday.

“If drastic measures are not taken urgently, hunger will increase as climate change is felt everywhere, most intensely in vulnerable areas, such as Sudan,” said Zitouni Ould-Dada, from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

Sudan is among the East African nations facing “acute food insecurity”, the Famine Early Warnings Systems Network warned earlier this month, highlighting the dire situation, especially in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia.

As the COP27 summit opened, a joint statement from over a dozen UN agencies and major charities warned the Horn of Africa was gripped by the “longest and most severe drought in recent history”, warning that parts of Somalia are “projected to face famine”.

Africa is home to some of the countries least responsible for carbon emissions but hardest hit by an onslaught of weather extremes.

Sudan, like many other countries on the continent, has been hit hard in recent years by erratic weather patterns — harsh droughts and searing temperatures followed by torrential rains.

Around a third of the population, over 15 million people, will need aid next year, the highest level for over a decade, according to the World Food Program (WFP).

– ‘Takes political will’ –

The climate summit in Egypt, billed as the “African COP”, must be where the continent’s food security is addressed, said Ould-Dada, deputy director of the FAO’s Climate and Environment Division.

But despite the vast resources of the continent, many nations are reliant on importing food, Ould-Dada added.

“It does not make sense for Africa to import 40 percent of its wheat from Russia and Ukraine when it itself is so rich in resources,” he said, on the sidelines of the climate talks in Egypt’s Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

“It takes political will to fight poverty and hunger globally.”

The FAO recently agreed a $10 million project with Sudan’s forestry authority to help support farmers, including by protecting crucial gum arabic trees — which provide a key ingredient for fizzy drinks — to combat rapid desertification.

Sudan is already struggling with what experts and activists say is the result of shifting weather patterns: worsening conflicts over scarce land and water resources.

Though linking the heating planet to conflict is complex, the International Crisis Group calls climate change “a threat multiplier” that increases “food insecurity, water scarcity and resource competition, while disrupting livelihoods and spurring migration.”

Sudan is the world’s fifth most vulnerable country to the impacts of climate change, according to a 2020 ranking in the Global Adaptation Index, compiled by Notre Dame University in the United States.

Increasing demands on dwindling natural resources have fuelled inter-ethnic conflict in Sudan, including the 2003 war that erupted in the arid western region of Darfur.

While a peace deal for Darfur was struck in 2020 with key rebel groups, violence continues.

With agriculture and livestock accounting for 43 percent of employment and 30 percent of GDP, conflicts over livestock and access to water and land continue.

According to the UN, 800 people have been killed this year and more than 260,000 displaced in conflict across Sudan.

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest has been rampant in recent years

UN climate talks got a boost Wednesday as Brazilian president-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva launched the country back into the battle to curb warming and global leaders reaffirmed key pledges.

With G20 leaders issuing a final communique committing to pursue the more ambitious limits on global heating, momentum at the climate meeting in Egypt was generated at the sidelines of the fraught negotiations.

Lula kicked off a day of events Wednesday with a call to host the 2025 climate talks in the Amazon region, in his first international trip since defeating outgoing far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, who presided over years of rampant Amazon deforestation.

“I am here to say to all of you that Brazil is back in the world,” said Lula as he received a hero’s welcome from hundreds of people applauding him at an Amazon region pavilion in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

“Brazil was not born to be an isolated country,” said Lula, who was due to deliver a speech later on Wednesday.

“We will put up a very strong fight against illegal deforestation,” he said, announcing the creation of a ministry of Indigenous people to protect the vast region’s vulnerable communities.

Lula arrived in Egypt on Tuesday and went straight into climate diplomacy with meetings with US envoy John Kerry and China’s Xie Zhenhua.

– Kerry ‘pleased’ –

Kerry told a COP27 biodiversity panel on Wednesday that the United States would work with other nations to help protect the Amazon.

“I was pleased last night to meet with president-elect Lula and was really encouraged by the ways in which he talked about for once and for all getting it right… in order to preserve the Amazon,” Kerry said.

Under Bolsonaro, a staunch ally of agribusiness, average annual deforestation increased 75 percent compared with the previous decade.

“We need a new sense of hope to build trust and momentum towards a positive outcome at COP27,” said Brazilian climate campaigner, Mariana Paoli, Christian Aid’s global advocacy lead.

“President Lula’s election victory in Brazil has the potential to breathe new life into this process with his progressive agenda that seeks to bring Brazil back to the table and end the disastrous climate policies of his predecessor.”

In another boost to the UN climate process, a final communique from world leaders meeting at the Group of 20 talks in Bali, Indonesia included key promises to “pursue efforts” to curb global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, a safer limit according to scientists.

The document, which also reiterated a commitment to phase out “inefficient” fossil fuel subsidies over the medium term, was welcomed by observers as a way to galvanise the climate talks as they enter their final days.

The G20 meeting was also the stage of a crucial meeting between US President Joe Biden and China’s Xi Jinping, where the two leaders agreed to resume their climate cooperation.

Ani Dasgupta, head of the World Resources Institute, said positive signals from leaders at the G20 “should put wind in the sails” of negotiators in Egypt.

– Climate leadership –

Bolsonaro, who did not attend the G20 summit in Bali, has maintained a low profile since losing the Brazilian election.

While his government has a pavilion at COP27, former steelworker Lula deployed two of his former environment ministers to lay the groundwork for his visit.

One of them, Marina Silva, who is tipped to return to the job when Lula takes office on January 1, said Brazil wants to set an example with Lula’s plan to fight deforestation.

Latin America’s most populous country grew more isolated under Bolsonaro, analysts say, in part due to his permissive policies towards deforestation and exploitation of the Amazon — the preservation of which is seen as critical to fighting global warming.

Brazil is home to 60 percent of the Amazon, which spans eight countries and acts as a massive sink for carbon emissions.

Silva promoted the idea of creating a new national authority to coordinate climate action among government ministries, and of pursuing a reforestation target of 12 million hectares (over 29 million acres).

The incoming administration wants the United States to contribute to the Amazon Fund, considered one of the main tools to reduce deforestation in the planet’s biggest tropical forest.

Following Lula’s victory, the fund’s main contributors, Norway and Germany, announced they would participate again, after freezing aid in 2019 in the wake of Bolsonaro’s election.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro and his counterpart Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela presented at COP27 last week an Amazon protection initiative that they hope Brazil will join.

NASA's Artemis 1 uncrewed lunar rocket lifts off from Kennedy Space Center at the start of its 25-day lunar mission

NASA launched the most powerful rocket ever built on a journey to the Moon on Wednesday, in a spectacular blaze of light and sound that marked the start of the space agency’s new flagship program, Artemis.

The 32-story tall Space Launch System (SLS) blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 01:47 am (0647 GMT), producing a record 8.8 million pounds (39 meganewtons) of thrust.

“What you have done today will inspire generations to come, thank you!” Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, NASA’s first female launch director, told cheering teammates. 

Fixed to the rocket’s top was the uncrewed Orion spaceship that will orbit Earth’s nearest neighbor, in a test run for later flights that should see the first woman and first person of color touch down on lunar soil by the mid-2020s.

About two hours after launch, NASA said the spacecraft was on its trajectory to the Moon, and later released the first images taken of Earth receding behind the craft.

“Now we are going back to the Moon, not just for the sake of going to the Moon, but to learn how to live on the Moon in order to prepare to send humans all the way to Mars,” NASA administrator Bill Nelson told a news conference after the launch.

“This is the next beginning, this is the Artemis generation,” added Nelson, who said he watched the launch from the roof of the rocket assembly building along with a group of astronauts.

America last sent astronauts to the Moon during the Apollo era, from 1969-1972. 

This time it hopes to build a sustained presence — including a lunar space station — to help prepare for an eventual mission to Mars in the 2030s.

There were nervous moments as teams worked to overcome technical issues that ate into the two-hour launch window, which opened at 1:04 am.

First, engineers were forced to pause the flow of liquid hydrogen into the core stage Tuesday night because of a valve leak, but a team sent to the launch pad resolved the issue after about an hour, by tightening loose bolts. 

Later, the space agency reported that a radar site monitoring the rocket’s flight path was experiencing problems due to a faulty ethernet switch, which had to be replaced.

It was third time lucky for NASA after two previous launch attempts were canceled for technical reasons. The launch was also delayed due to weather setbacks including Hurricane Ian, which battered Florida in late September.

– ‘Extremely excited’ –

About 100,000 people were expected to have gathered along the coast to witness the historic event.

Todd Garland drove from Frankfurt, Kentucky to watch from Cocoa Beach. 

Wearing an Artemis T-shirt, the 55-year-old told AFP tearfully: “This has been an experience I’ve looked forward to all my life. 

“My first memory is my mother waking me up at two years old to watch the Moon landing and I’ve always wanted to see a launch ever since, and now I have.”

Kerry Warner, 59, a grandmother and semi-retired educator who lives in Florida, added the launch was “part of America and what America is all about.”

– Far side of the Moon –

The Orion crew capsule was lifted by two boosters and four powerful engines under the core stage, which detached after just a few minutes.

A final push from the upper stage set the capsule on its way to the Moon, though it will take several days to reach its destination. 

The upper stage will meanwhile release 10 CubeSats to carry out science experiments, including one that will unfurl a sail-powered by sunlight and perform asteroid reconnaissance work.

Rather than landing on the Moon, Orion will assume a distant orbit, venturing 40,000 miles (64,000 kilometers) beyond the far side — further than any other habitable spacecraft so far.

Finally, the spaceship will embark on the return leg of its journey. When passing through the atmosphere, the capsule’s heat shield will need to withstand a temperature half as hot as the Sun’s surface.

Though Orion isn’t carrying humans this time, it has three sensor-equipped dummies on board to help gather safety data for future crew members.

The mission will last 25-and-a-half days, with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean on December 11.

NASA is banking on a successful mission after developing the SLS rocket for more than a decade. 

It will have invested more than $90 billion in its new lunar program by the end of 2025, according to a public audit.

Artemis 2 will involve a flyby of the Moon with astronauts in 2024, while Artemis 3 will see boots on lunar soil, no sooner than 2025. 

NASA hopes to settle into a yearly launch schedule, and will include international partners from Japan, Canada and Europe.