(UPDATED) CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida: The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) new moon rocket blasted off on its debut flight with three test dummies aboard on Wednesday, bringing the United States a big step closer to putting astronauts back on the lunar surface for the first time since the end of the Apollo program 50 years ago.

If all goes well during the three-week, make-or-break shakedown flight, the rocket would propel an empty crew capsule into a wide orbit around the moon, and then the capsule would return to Earth with a splashdown in the Pacific in December.