The maiden launch of NASA's Space Launch System, likely in late 2018 or early 2019, will primarily serve to demonstrate that the massive rocket is capable of delivering a sizable payload—the Orion spacecraft—into a lunar orbit. However, amid the launch fireworks and shakedown mission for the uncrewed Orion spacecraft, NASA will also manage to do a little science.

The adapter ring that connects Orion to the rocket will include 13 bays for CubeSats, shoe-box sized payloads that until now haven't been delivered in significant numbers into deep space. Each of those payload operators is working to finalize contracts with NASA for the ride into space, and on Monday, Lockheed Martin announced a few details of its 6U CubeSat, called SkyFire. Lockheed's payload will capture high-quality images of the Moon. And in exchange for the ride into deep space, NASA will receive data from the mission.

“The CubeSat will look for specific lunar characteristics like solar illumination areas,” James Russell, Lockheed Martin SkyFire principal investigator, said in a news release. “We’ll be able to see new things with sensors that are less costly to make and send to space.”

Lockheed Martin said it is developing a lighter, simpler infrared camera to fit within the CubeSat payload. Such technology, with lower-cost and lighter scientific instruments, might eventually be employed on future NASA missions sent much deeper into the solar system. For example, as part of an orbiter mission to Europa in the 2020s, NASA is contemplating including some CubeSats that could be deployed to fly near the surface of the Jovian moon to collect more information about the nature of its icy, mysterious surface.

Other CubeSat payloads to be included on NASA's upcoming Exploration Mission-1 include an IceCube to search for water ice on the Moon and BioSentinel to measure the effects of deep space radiation on living organisms. NASA has targeted a launch window of September to November 2018 for the inaugural flight of its large new rocket, but the organization has acknowledged that the date could slip due to unforeseen problems with the SLS rocket or Orion spacecraft.