Shuttle Atlantis unwrapped ahead of public debut

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine on Thursday urged space enthusiasts not to travel to the Kennedy Space Center next month to view the first launch of astronauts from the Florida spaceport since 2011, and asked people to instead watch the launch on television or online.

The world’s most powerful operational rocket flashed to life at 2:30 a.m. EDT (0630 GMT) Tuesday and climbed into a moonlit summer sky from pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the same site where the Apollo 11 astronauts left Earth for their historic moon landing nearly 50 years ago.

On track for launch from Cape Canaveral in July, NASA’s Perseverance rover has been secured to its rocket-powered descent stage and back shell, part of the protective shield that will safeguard the robot when it arrives at Mars next year.