Video: Learn about the Orion flight test launching in December

NASA officials released a nearly five-year, $28 billion plan Monday to return astronauts to the surface of the moon before the end of 2024, but the agency’s administrator said the “aggressive” timeline set by the Trump administration last year hinges on Congress approving $3.2 billion in the next few months to kick-start development of new human-rated lunar landers.

Fresh home from a high-flying test flight Friday that took it 3,600 miles above Earth, NASA’s Orion spacecraft was pulled off a U.S. Navy recovery ship Monday night for initial inspections before a cross-country trip to its home base in Florida.

A recovery team stationed in the Pacific Ocean west of Baja California secured NASA’s Orion spacecraft and winched it into the flooded well deck of a U.S. Navy transport ship after the capsule splashed down into the sea to wrap up a successful four-and-a-half hour test flight.