A medium-lift Long March 8 rocket carried the Queqiao-2 spacecraft aloft from the Wenchang launch base, located on Hainan Island in southern China.

The orientation of Queqiao-2’s elongated orbit will allow the spacecraft to loiter for hours over the landing sites Chinese officials have selected for the country’s next series of robotic Moon missions.

The results from these tests will inform Chinese engineers designing a constellation of data relay and navigation satellites that could be in place in the next decade, sort of like a lunar GPS.

Scheduled for launch on a heavy-lift Long March 5 rocket in May, Chang’e 6 will be the first Chinese lunar lander to rely on the new data relay satellite.

China’s goal for Chang’e 6 is to gather the first rocks from the far side of the Moon and bring them back for detailed examination in labs on Earth.

Weighing more than 2,600 pounds (1.2 metric tons) fully fueled for launch, Queqiao-2 is a larger spacecraft, more than twice the mass of China’s first lunar communications relay station.

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