NASA's Orion spacecraft reached the farthest outbound point in its journey from Earth on Monday, a distance of more than 430,000 km from humanity's home world.

LaBrode was speaking during a news conference at Johnson Space Center in Houston, where he and other NASA officials provided an update on the progress of the mission to test out the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft.

This uncrewed test flight is a precursor to crewed missions later this decade, including a lunar landing on the Artemis III mission.

After it completed a successful launch, mission manager Mike Sarafin said the agency now has full confidence in the Space Launch System rocket.

This work will further increase NASA's confidence in the Orion capsule and the propulsive service module provided by the European Space Agency.

It was a long, bumpy, and costly development path to reach this mission with the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft.

But once the vehicles began flying, their performance has met every expectation and hope of the space agency, increasing confidence in the future of the Artemis program to explore the Moon.