NASA’s Orion spacecraft was launched into lunar orbit on Friday, and the long-delayed Moon mission was a success, officials said. Just a week after the spacecraft took off from Florida to the moon, the US space agency said on its website that flight controllers “successfully carried out an operation to place Orion in a high-elevation orbit.”

The spacecraft will take astronauts to the moon for years to come and will be the first vehicle to set foot on its surface since the last Apollo mission in 1972. This first unmanned test flight is to make sure the vehicle is safe.

“The orbit is long as Orion will fly about 40,000 miles above the moon,” NASA said.

While in lunar orbit, flight controllers will monitor key systems and perform inspections while in the deep space environment, the agency said. It will take about a week for Orion to go half a circle around the Moon. It will then exit orbit to return home, according to NASA.

The plane is expected to fly 40,000 miles beyond the moon on Saturday, which is a habitable capsule record. The current record is held by the Apollo 13 spacecraft, which is 248,655 miles (400,171 km) from Earth. It will then begin its return journey to Earth, landing in the Pacific Ocean, scheduled for 11 December, after a little over 25 days of flight.

The success of this mission will determine the future of the Artemis 2 mission, which will take the astronauts around the moon without landing, and then Artemis 3, which will mark the return of humans to the lunar surface. These missions are planned for 2024 and 2025, respectively.