Orion capsule makes its way to Earth after completing the "moon trip"

 The unmanned Orion capsule of the US Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) returns to Earth, Sunday, after completing its journey around the moon, to conclude the first mission of the Artemis exploration program, 50 years after the last landing of the Apollo mission on the moon.

The capsule, carrying a mock crew of three dummies attached to sensors, is scheduled to parachute into the Pacific Ocean at 17:39 GMT near Guadalupe Island, off Mexico's Baja California Peninsula. Orion concludes its 25-day mission, less than a week after it reached a distance of about 127 km above the moon and about two weeks after it reached the farthest point in space, at a distance of approximately 434,500 km from Earth.

Orion launched on November 16 from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, atop a NASA Space Launch System rocket, a second-generation high-altitude rocket. It is now the most powerful rocket in the world and the largest built by NASA since the Saturn V during the Apollo missions, according to Reuters.

 With the launch of the Orion voyage, the Apollo missions' successor, the Artemis Program, aims to return astronauts to the lunar surface this decade and establish a sustainable base there as a springboard for future Mars exploration. The return of the first Artemis mission to Earth coincided with the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 17 landing on the moon on December 11, 1972.