After NASA’s Artemis II lifted off on Wednesday, people worldwide watched the launch - as crowds gathered along beaches near Kennedy Space Centre in Cape Canaveral, Florida, in the United States, to catch a glimpse of history.

It was the first crewed lunar spaceflight in more than half a century, and it had men, women and children were equally excited beyond belief.

With parents across the country recording themselves and their children reacting to the launch, one woman who was watching the launch from a golf course in Tampa, //www.tiktok.com/@rae_baecon/video/7624137797846191390">posted a video to TikTok showing her grandmother, father and young children as the Artemis II rocket appeared over the horizon. “Special moment that 4 generations of my family got to enjoy,” she wrote in the caption.

Even reporters covering the launch were left awestruck. Science editor, Rebecca Morelle, who watched the launch from Florida, was moved to tears.

“Oh My Days,” she said. “That is spectacular!”

“It's not just what you see and hear as the rocket lifts off, you can actually feel the force of it through your body,” she went on. The voyage of Apollo 17, the last crewed moon mission, took place in 1972.

“There are a lot of people who don’t remember Apollo. There are generations who weren’t alive when Apollo launched,” NASA’s science mission chief Nicky Fox said at a prelaunch press conference.

"This is their Apollo.” The Artemis II astronauts — NASA commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch and Canadian space agency mission specialist Jeremy Hansen — won’t be landing on the moon.

Instead, they will be testing life support systems on a 10-day journey around the moon and back for future crewed missions to the moon’s surface. Actor Tom Hanks, who starred in the movie ‘Apollo 13’, celebrated the Artemis II launch in an Instagram post, thanking each astronaut by name.

“Did you know that no humans have travelled beyond the gravitational pull of the Earth since December 1972?” Hanks wrote.

“That changes today...”