NASA wants to experiment with a new lunar orbit that it hopes to use in the coming years to land astronauts on the lunar surface again.

The agency is sending a test satellite from New Zealand. The initial stages of the launch went as planned late Tuesday evening as the rocket and satellite reached space.

If the rest of the mission is successful, the Microwave-sized Capstone CubeSat satellite will be the first to take a new path around the moon and send vital information for at least six months.

Technically, the new orbit is called an almost rectilinear halo orbit. This is an elongated egg, one end of which passes close to the moon, and the other far from it.