NASA, in 2018, is going to launch the unmanned Orion spacecraft with the help of the Space Launch System (SLS). Armed with an asteroid hunter, lunar flashlight and DNA kit, the spacecraft will be NASA's largest, most powerful rocket booster ever built.

The US space agency has planned to use the SLS's massive lift capability for carrying around a dozen nano-satellites. It will be used to conduct science experiments beyond low-Earth orbit and eventually, Mars.

Orion will be launched on an unmanned test flight to a distant retrograde orbit around the moon.

Jody Singer from the Marshall Space Flight Centre in Huntsville, Alabama, said, "NASA is taking advantage of a great opportunity to conduct more science beyond our primary focus of this mission. We are taking steps to increase the scientific and exploration capability of SLS by accommodating small, CubeSat-class payloads".

The secondary payloads include Near-Earth Asteroid (NEA) Scout, Lunar Flashlight and BioSentinel. NEA Scout will fly by a small asteroid, capturing pictures and making observations using solar sail propulsion.

This will be helpful in enhancing the current understanding of an asteroid environment. It will also yield important information for the future astronauts who are exploring an asteroid.

NASA's Lunar Flashlight will look for locations on the lunar surface that are rich in resources. These resources once broken down into their component molecules could be used in future exploration, such as building materials, propellant, oxygen and water.

With the BioSentinel mission, it will be for the first time in over 40 years that the living organisms will be travelling to deep space. The spacecraft will be operating in the deep space radiation environment throughout its 18-month mission.

About 10 minutes after the escape from the pull of Earth's gravity, Orion and its service module will disconnect and Orion will proceed toward the moon.

In a statement, the space agency said that after reaching a safe distance away, Orion's small payloads will begin to deploy, all at different times during the flight depending on the particular missions.