It continues to be a busy week for space, as NASA’s new Orion spacecraft was maneuvered into position on its launch pad in Florida in preparation for a flight net month.

The spacecraft was sent 22 miles to the launch pad in Cape Canaveral, Florida, where it was then hoisted into place atop a Delta IV rocket in preparation for the launch, which will take place on Dec. 4, according to the Associated Press.

It will test NASA’s ability to send an unmanned capsule 3,600 miles from Earth before returning to the atmosphere and dropping into the Pacific Ocean. The test flight itself will last just over four hours.

The ultimate goal is for a future Orion capsule to carry astronauts on deep-space missions, including a potential trip to Mars. The first manned flights are expected in 2021. The capsules can carry four passengers, compared to three for the older Apollo spacecraft model.

Dubbed Exploration Flight Test No. 1, the test will send Orion around the Earth twice to test the new crew module as NASA attempts to verify that the module is safe before attempting to put humans inside it.

Orion will reenter the atmosphere at 20,000 miles per hour, where it will endure temperatures of up to 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit in order to simulate the kind of beating a capsule would experience after coming back from a deep-space mission.

Bill Hill, deputy associate administrator for Exploration Systems Development for the program, was quoted in Spaceflight Now as saying that it would be the first in a “long line of exploration missions beyond low-Earth orbit,” and astronauts will be able to probe deeper into space than ever before.

EFT No. 1 will give Lockheed Martin engineers data and telemetry from Orion’s systems and hardware in preparation for an actual trip with humans. It is a compilation of the riskier events the spacecraft will experience.