NASA said Wednesday that contact has been restored with its $32.7 million spacecraft headed to the moon to test out a lopsided lunar orbit.

Contact was lost after one successful communication and a second partial one on Monday, after the spacecraft, called CAPSTONE, left Earth's orbit on its way to the moon, the space agency said.

The 55-pound satellite, which is the size of a microwave oven, was launched from New Zealand on June 28. It had spent nearly a week in Earth orbit and had been successfully kick-started on its way to the moon.

It will take another four months for the satellite to reach the moon, as it cruises along using minimal energy.

If the rest of the mission is successful, the CAPSTONE satellite will send back vital information for months as the first to take a new orbit around the moon called a near-rectilinear halo orbit: a stretched-out egg shape with one end of the orbit passing close to the moon and the other far from it.

Eventually, NASA plans to put a space station called Gateway into the orbital path, from which astronauts can descend to the moon's surface as part of its Artemis program.

The orbit balances the gravities of Earth and the moon, thus requiring little maneuvering and therefore fuel to allow the satellite or a space station to stay in constant contact with Earth, according to NASA.