And here we go. 10, 9, 8, 7.
RS-25 engines lit. 4, 3, 2, 1.
Booster ignition.
And lift off.
The crew of Artemis II now bound for the moon.
Humanity's next great voyage begins.
Roll pitch.
Houston now controlling the flight of integrity on the Artemis II mission around the boat.
Just after 11pm on Wednesday night, that was the sound of NASA's Artemis 2 mission taking off from the Florida coast.
Four astronauts on a huge rocket heading at great speed to space.
Their final destination is the moon.
They're not going to land there, but they're going to go around the dark side of the moon.
And when they make it there, these pioneers will be the humans who have travelled furthest from Earth.
Sometimes I'm a little bit sceptical of space stories.
But everyone is united on this one, that it 's ambitious,
it 's awe-inspiring, and also it 's very accessible because so much of this mission you can tune into in real time.
And that's what we will be focusing on in this episode of Newscast.
Now, simultaneously, the countdown in Florida,
there was the countdown to Donald Trump's big address to the American people,
which he did at about two o'clock on Thursday morning UK time.