US space agency NASA has successfully sent a spacecraft no bigger than a microwave oven to orbit around the moon, the agency said on Sunday.

The satellite, called CAPSTONE (Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment), completed an "initial orbit insertion maneuver" and fired its thrusters to put the spacecraft into orbit late Sunday, NASA said in a statement.

CAPSTONE blasted off aboard a Rocket Lab Electron rocket from a spaceport in New Zealand in June.

The satellite will now begin a "significantly elongated" near-rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO) that should last six months. The orbit follows the path the planned Gateway space station will take once it is in operation.

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CAPSTONE is the first spacecraft to fly an NRHO and the first CubeSat to operate at the Moon, NASA said.

The Gateway space station is to serve as an intermediate station for manned missions to the moon – and later possibly also as a station for missions to Mars.