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to the moon began, known as the translunar injection burn.

The maneuver, which began at 7:49 pm ET (2349 GMT), is an orbital exit ramp slinging them out of Earth’s orbit and onto a figure-eight-shaped trajectory toward the moon. It’s the final major thruster firing of the mission, leaving the Orion capsule largely under the influence of orbital mechanics for the remainder of the mission.

Commander Reid Wiseman, testing cameras as the crew flew roughly 40,000 miles away from Earth earlier on Thursday, saw the planet as a shrinking sunlit globe, and said taking photos from that distance made it difficult to adjust exposure settings.

“It’s like walking out back at your house, trying to take a picture of the moon. That’s what it feels like right now trying to take a picture of Earth,” he told mission control in Houston as he snapped photos of his home planet with an iPhone.

Wiseman earlier faced a minor tech issue when his initial attempts to use Microsoft Outlook to check emails failed, but that was fixed quickly with help from mission control.