The winds died down for SpaceX as it queued up its rarely used Falcon Heavy right after sunset from the Space Coast on Sunday.

The fifth flight of the powerhouse rocket lifted off at 5:56 p.m. Eastern time from Kennedy Space Center's Launch Pad 39-A on a mission for the Space Force dubbed USSF-67. With winds over 20 mph gusting on Saturday across the region, the launch was pushed by a day.

But Sunday's skies were clear and calm so at liftoff, the rocket's plume lit up in glorious orange billows while creating a distant dark shadow slanting across the horizon.

The cheers of employees and their families on site were soon drowned out by the rumble of the 5.1 million pounds of thrust that tumbled across the space center, eventually dying away but not without setting off a few car alarms.

Falcon Heavy, which only falls second to NASA's Space Launch System in terms of most powerful active rockets, is essentially three Falcon 9s strapped together outfitted with 27 Merlin engines across the three first stages.

The Artemis program intends to put humans on the moon for the first time since NASA's Apollo missions. But Artemis has a larger scope than just landing people there, setting up some science experiments, gathering moon rocks, playing a little golf, then leaving. The intent is to establish a consistent presence.

That will require resources, and one of those critical resources is oxygen.

Dr. Peter A. Curreri has been a NASA scientist for decades and has been a strong proponent of human spaceflight. Since 2021, Curreri's been the Chief Science Officer for Lunar Resources, Inc. Lunar Resources is proposing a novel concept for Artemis: an oxygen pipeline.

An ongoing human presence on Mars requires a few things to succeed, and the foundation of success is built on water and oxygen. The lunar south pole contains vast quantities of primordial water ice, frozen solid in the region's craters where sunlight never reaches it.