The historic Artemis I mission is just beginning its lunar journey | CNN

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The third time is the charm and now NASA’s mega rocket has made history.

The Artemis I mission launched its journey to the moon on Wednesday. Putting on a light show in the morning sky over Cape Canaveral, Florida, the Space Launch System lifted the uncrewed Orion spacecraft through the skies.

Years of delays were followed by recurring hydrogen leak problems and two hurricanes that slammed into the rocket home at Kennedy Space Center. Another leak nearly hampered liftoff this week, but NASA’s Red Crew – a heroic team tasked with performing live repairs on a fueled rocket – responded at the 11th hour.

Members of Team Artemis overcame the challenges thrown at them, and when the rocket launched, it seemed like a moment that rekindled hopes for future exploration.

As Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, NASA’s first female launch director, said, “The harder the climb, the better the view. We showed the Space Coast tonight what a beautiful sight it is.

A few hours after the launch of Artemis I, the Orion spacecraft began sharing its impressive views from space.

The capsule’s cameras captured a breathtaking perspective of our planet. The images were reminiscent of those last seen 50 years ago, taken from Apollo 17 in 1972.

The Artemis I mission is speeding up its 25.5-day journey that will circle the Moon and return to Earth on December 11. This Monday, the rocket will make its closest approach to the lunar surface. During its cosmic journey, Orion is expected to break the distance record for a human-rated spacecraft set by Apollo 13.

Follow the next steps of Orion’s lunar journey using CNN’s new interactive service.

Many people tend to take running water for granted, assuming that when the tap turns on it will still be there.

But this finite resource is a little more valuable than it seems. Water scarcity is already a problem for billions of people, and it is getting worse with the climate crisis.

Taking certain steps to save water with your kitchen faucet, toilet, washing machine and outside your home can have a positive impact.

Find more ideas on how to minimize your role in the climate crisis in CNN’s limited series of Life, But Greener newsletters.

In Uganda’s Kibale National Park, a wild chimpanzee named Fiona showed her mother, Sutherland, a leaf so they could share the experience together – and scientists filmed the interaction.

Fiona was “grooming the leaves,” meaning she touched and manipulated the leaf beforehand, a common behavior that remains a mystery to researchers. Then Fiona showed the sheet to her mother.

“She seems to show it just for the sake of showing it. It’s like, ‘look, look, that’s cool, isn’t it?’ And that’s very human and something that we thought was quite unique to our species,” said Katie Slocombe, professor of psychology at the University of York in the UK.

Captive chimpanzees have been observed pointing at things they want from human guardians. But seeing social behavior in wild chimpanzees that simply suggests “show and tell” could say more about how they communicate.

Imagine you are an ant walking along the forest floor when spores rain down from above.

The seemingly harmless shower of spores is actually a parasitic fungus that takes over the ant’s body and brain, essentially turning it into a zombie.

The infected ant climbs a tree, clings to a hanging leaf and dies when the fungus consumes it. Then, like a scene from the movie “Alien”, the parasite bursts from its host’s body and releases the spores that will beg for more unintended prey.

But scientists have discovered a new twist in this horror story that could help save the ants from this zombie fate.

An impressive new image from the James Webb Space Telescope shows gas and dust being released from a chaotic newborn star. The material moving away from the star has been shaped into a cosmic hourglass.

Meanwhile, Webb used his infrared vision to effectively look back in time and see some of the most distant galaxies ever seen by a telescope.

The unusually bright galaxies have turned the script on what astronomers expected and could change the way they understand the early universe.

Need Thanksgiving anecdotes to share with your friends and family? Keep these stories under your cap:

— A meteorite that landed in a family’s garden in England could explain where the Earth’s water comes from.

— A 600-year-old English coin has been found off the coast of Newfoundland, and historians are trying to trace the rare artifact’s journey to reach Canada.

– The earliest known evidence of cooking from 780,000 years ago shows that our ancient human ancestors feasted on an extinct type of fish that reached 6.5 feet in length.

Speaking of holidays, the Wonder Theory team is making time for Thanksgiving. We won’t have a new edition for you on Saturday, November 26. But you can bet we’ll be back to share all the wonders of space and science again on December 3. Until there !