According to officials, NASA’s Orion spacecraft successfully completed the long-delayed Moon mission on Friday and was deployed into lunar orbit.
Flight controllers “successfully completed a burn to place Orion into a distant retrograde orbit,” the US space agency announced on its website, a little over a week after the spacecraft launched from Florida heading for the Moon.
In the upcoming years, the spacecraft will deliver astronauts to the Moon, the first people to do so since the final Apollo mission in 1972.
According to the agency, while in lunar orbit, flight controllers will keep an eye on important systems and conduct checkouts in the harsh environment of deep space.
The spacecraft is anticipated to go a record-breaking 40,000 kilometres beyond the Moon on Saturday. At 248,655 miles (400,171 kilometres) from Earth, the Apollo 13 spacecraft holds the current record.
If this mission is a success, it will set the stage for Artemis 2, which will fly astronauts around the Moon without a landing, and Artemis 3, which will finally bring people back to the lunar surface.