It is Nasa's first launch from a commercial site outside the US - and a landmark moment for Australia.
An unassuming patch of red dirt in remote Australia has made history as the site of Nasa's first rocket launch from a commercial spaceport outside the US.It will enable astrophysics studies that can only be undertaken in the Southern Hemisphere, Nasa says.The rocket is the first of three to blast off from the newly constructed Arnhem Space Centre on the edge of the Northern Territory.
Onlookers who travelled to the remote site glimpsed the rocket for only about 10 seconds before it entered the Earth's atmosphere. "It went up, and then the sound, it was just like a rumbling boom, like nothing I've ever heard. And I just shook with amazement."tenure in space was similarly short - the 13m-long projectile fell back to Earth after a planned 15 minutes.
"Without getting too deep into the science, it was effectively a large X-ray camera looking at various astrological phenomenon and trying to capture parts of boulders in the Milky Way and particularly the star cluster of Alpha Centauri," Arnhem Space Centre chief executive Michael Jones told the local network Nine.