NASA’s John Glenn spacecraft, progress spacecraft to reach orbit

A U.S. space agency’s spacecraft is expected to reach an orbit that would be the furthest that any spacecraft has ever traveled in human history, NASA said Monday.

The John Glenn Spacecraft Exploration Mission 1 (JGS-1) spacecraft is scheduled to be launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 1:26 a.m.

EST (2:26 p.m., EDT) on Monday, the space agency said in a statement.

The spacecraft will pass within 1.8 million miles (2.4 million kilometers) of Earth and will be the longest orbital journey by a spacecraft ever, according to NASA.

The mission, which is being called JGS-2, is the first mission of the James Webb Space Telescope, which NASA has been working on since its launch in 2018.

It will help scientists understand the evolution of the universe and the nature of our home planet.