NASA’s Orion capsule and test dummies made their final journey around the moon on Monday, passing over a pair of Apollo landing sites before heading home. Orion plans to land in the Pacific Ocean near San Diego on Sunday, laying the groundwork for astronauts on its next flight in a few years.

The capsule passed within 80 miles (130 kilometers) of the far side of the Moon, using the Moon’s gravity as a slingshot to travel 237,000 miles (380,000 kilometers) back to Earth. It spent a week in a vast lunar orbit. After leaving the Moon and reconnecting with flight controllers in Houston, Orion remotely released close-up pictures of the Moon and Earth with its crescent moon.

“Orion has now reached its goal,” said Mission Control Commentator Sandra Jones.

The capsule also flew over the landing sites of Apollo 12 and 14. But at an altitude of 1,200 miles (1,900 kilometers), it was too high to see the landing stages of the moon landing modules or anything else that had let the astronauts down. there. A hundred years ago, during a similar transition two weeks ago, it was too dark for photographs. This time it was daytime.

Zebulon Scoville, Deputy Flight Director, said that nearby craters and other geological features will be visible in any image, but very little other than that.

“It will be more of a hat tip and a historic nod to the past,” Scoville told reporters last week.

According to officials, the three-week test flight exceeded expectations. But the biggest challenge is yet to come: entering the atmosphere at 30 times the speed of sound and surviving a fiery entrance. Orion was launched on November 16 on the first flight of NASA’s most powerful rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS).

The next flight – already in 2024 – will try to get four astronauts around the Moon. The third mission, scheduled for 2025, will include astronauts’ first landing on the moon since Apollo’s moon landing program ended 50 years ago this month.

Apollo 17 took off with Eugene Cernan, Harrison Schmitt, and Ron Evans from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on December 7, 1972. Cernan and Schmitt spent three days on the lunar surface, the longest of the Apollo era, while Evans orbited the moon. Only Schmidt is still alive.