The mission, which took off last Wednesday at 6:35 p.m. (22:35 GMT) from the Kennedy Space Center, it is advancing at 5,632 kilometers per hour towards the Moon, where it hopes to arrive this Monday.
The European Space Agency captured the Orion spacecraft about 183,936 kilometers from Earth and about 244,298 kilometers from the Moon, when the clock showed 23:00 GMT on Saturday.
The crew — composed of Commander Reid Wiseman and astronauts Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen — is expected to make history next Monday by reaching the far side of the Moon and traveling the greatest distance ever traveled from Earth: 406,773 kilometers (252,757 miles).
This distance is greater than the 400,171 kilometers (248,655 miles) reached by the Apollo 13 crew in 1970.
After two days of travel, the mission has not registered any major setbacks. Even this Saturday, flight controllers at the Mission Control Center at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston canceled the first trajectory correction maneuver, as the capsule remains on the correct flight path.
The maneuver constituted the first of three trajectory adjustments planned in the mission schedule to fine-tune the speed and trajectory of the spacecraft, which is expected to arrive next Monday at the far side of the Moon to take images in preparation for a future lunar landing.
However, the US space agency said in a statement that any necessary adjustments can be incorporated into a subsequent correction maneuver.
At a press conference this Saturday, Lakiesha Hawkins, associate administrator of NASA’s Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate (ESDMD), said the four astronauts were in “great spirit” and that “a lot of fun things” are happening in the Orion capsule amid a lot of hard work.
Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen is expected to speak to reporters live from Orion at 1:10 a.m. Eastern Time (6:00 GMT) on Saturday, according to the Canadian Space Agency.
NASA has set up a real-time tracker that shows the location of the Orion capsule so the public can follow the mission from home.
The tracker allows you to follow the trajectory of the mission, as well as record the speed of the capsule and the distance in miles that separates it from the Earth or the Moon.