Agency officials said that the Artemis 1 capsule is on target to fly by the moon on Monday.
The Artemis 1 mission is sending an uncrewed Orion toward the moon. Mission team members said that the capsule has been checking boxes like a veteran on the voyage.
Jim Geffre, NASA's Orion vehicle integration manager, said that the vehicle has been performing well so far. All of the systems are performing better than expected.
Related: Amazing views of NASA's Artemis 1 moon rocket debut (photos)
Live updates: NASA's Artemis 1 moon mission
The moon will be reached by the craft at 7:44 a.m. on Monday. The time is 12:44 The plan calls for the capsule to conduct a crucial engine burn during that close approach, a maneuver that will set the stage for landing on the moon.
After a meeting on Saturday, the Artemis 1 team will make a decision on whether or not to commit to that flyby burn. If they decided to change the plan, it would be a surprise.
"We're looking good right now, and we're ready to continue executing," the flight director said.
That's not to say the flight has been trouble free. The mission team members said that 13 anomalies have been detected so far.
The capsule had a problem with erratic readings from the star tracker. This initially puzzled the team, but they eventually found out that the tracker were being blinded by the glow from the thrusters. The team has been able to work through the issue because they have the other 12 funnies.
The issues may be more serious for some of the cubesats. According to Artemis 1 mission manager Mike Sarafin, only five of them are behaving as they were supposed to.
"ArgoMoon, BioSentinel, Equuleus, LunaH-Map and OMOTENASHI are on a path to success."
The other five, which are LunIR, Lunar Ice-Cube, Scout NEA, CuSP and Team Miles, either have encountered technical issues post-Deploy or have had intermittent communications or, in one case, did not acquire a signal with the communication asset that they had planned.
The Artemis 1 team does not have the most up-to-date information about the cubesats. OMOTENASHI is a tiny Japanese probe that wants to land on the moon.
The mobile launch tower of Artemis 1 was damaged by the most powerful rocket ever to launch successfully.
The blast doors off the tower's elevators were blown off during Wednesday's liftoff, which was the first ever for the giant rocket. Prior to Artemis 1, Orion had one flight under its belt.
The team had expected the SLS to give the tower a hard time. The launch tower hasn't been fully assessed yet, but technicians are working on it.
The team is going out of their way to get the full system status for the mobile launcher, and they are working their way through that.
After Monday's flyby burn, the next important engine firing will take place on Nov. 25. The capsule will travel as far as 40,000 miles from the moon's surface.
The capsule will stay in that position until December 1, when it will burn up in the atmosphere. If everything goes according to plan, Orion will splash down in the Pacific Ocean on December 11.
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