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The US space agency (Nasa) has launched its latest mission to the Moon, the BBC reported. 

The unmanned LADEE probe lifted off from the Wallops rocket facility on the US east coast on schedule at 23:27 local time (03:27 GMT on Saturday).

Its $280m (£180m) mission is to investigate the very tenuous atmosphere that surrounds the lunar body.

It will also try to get some insights on the strange behaviour of moondust, which appears on occasions to levitate high above the surface.

In addition, LADEE will test a new laser communications system that Nasa hopes at some point to put on future planetary missions. Lasers have the capacity to transmit data at rates that dwarf conventional radio connections.

LADEE stands for Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer.

Its programme scientist, Sarah Noble, says the mission is likely to surprise a lot of people who have been brought up to believe the Moon has no atmosphere.

“It does; it’s just it's really, really thin,” she told reporters.

“It’s so thin that the individual molecules are so few and far between that they don’t interact with each other; they never collide.

“It’s something we call an exosphere. The Earth has an exosphere as well, but you have to get out past where the International Space Station orbits before you get to this condition that we can consider an exosphere. At the Moon, it happens right at the surface.”