Nasa's new 'moon rocket' lifts off

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The 327-foot (100-metre) Ares I-X rocket resembled a giant white pencil as it shot into the sky, delayed a day by poor weather.

Nearly twice the height of the spaceship it's supposed to replace - the shuttle - the experimental rocket carried no passengers or payload, only throwaway ballast and hundreds of sensors.

The flight cost 445 million dollars (£272 million). It was the first time in nearly 30 years that a new rocket took off from Kennedy Space Centre. Columbia made the maiden voyage for the shuttle fleet back in 1981.

Lift-off, in fact, happened 48 years and one day after the first launch of a Saturn rocket, a precursor to what carried astronauts to the moon during the Apollo program.

The launch, years in the making, attracted a large crowd.

The ballistic flight did not come close to reaching space and, as expected, lasted a mere two minutes - as long as it took for the first-stage solid-fuel booster to burn out.

But it will take months to analyse all of the data from the approximately 725 pressure, strain and acceleration sensors.

The maximum altitude of the rocket was not immediately known, but had been expected to be 28 miles. Parachutes popped open to drop the booster into the Atlantic, where recovery ships waited.

The launch represented the first step in Nasa's effort to return astronauts to the moon. The White House, though, is re-evaluating the human space flight programme and may dump the Ares I in favour of another type of rocket and possibly another destination.