Nasa launches first rocket from Australian commercial spaceport

Key Facts

By Tiffanie Turnbull BBC News, Sydney Media caption, Watch Nasa’s ‘historic’ launch from outback 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.
The rocket is Nasa's first of three to blast off from the newly constructed Arnhem Space Centre on the edge of the Northern Territory.
"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.
Image source, NASA Image caption, Nasa consulted with Aboriginal custodians of the land before the launch The Arnhem Space Centre is the first and only commercially owned and run equatorial launch site in the world.