It was propelled by a solar-powered Hall-effect thruster (Snecma PPS-1350-G) using 82 kg of xenon gas contained in a 50 litres tank at a pressure of 150 bar at launch.

The project manager at ESA was Giuseppe Racca until the spacecraft achieved the moon operational orbit.

It detected the X-ray fluorescence (XRF) of crystal compounds created through the interaction of the electron shell with the solar wind particles to measure the abundance of the three main components: magnesium, silicon and aluminium.

SPEDE observed the emission of the spacecraft's ion engine and the "wake" the Moon leaves to the solar wind.

It took until February 2005 using the electric thruster to decelerate into the final orbit 300–3,000 km above the Moon's surface.

It is hoped that not only will this provide some data simulating a meteor impact, but also that it might expose materials in the ground, like water ice, to spectroscopic analysis.

[2] At the time of impact, the Moon was visible in North and South America, and places in the Pacific Ocean, but not Europe, Africa, or western Asia.

The use of CCSDS TLM and TC standards permitted a cost effective tailoring of seven different terminals of the ESA Tracking network (ESTRACK) plus Weilheim in Germany (DLR).

The components that were developed specifically for Smart-1 were: the simulator; a mix of hardware and software derived from the Electrical Ground Support Equipment EGSE equipment, the Mission Planning System and the Automation System developed from MOIS Archived 3 August 2019 at the Wayback Machine (this last based on a prototype implemented for Envisat) and a suite of engineering tools called MUST.

Unlike most ESA missions, there were no Spacecraft Controllers (SPACONs), and all operations and mission-planning activities were done by the FCT.

This concept originated overtime and night shifts during the first months of the mission but worked well during the cruise and the Moon phases.

The major concern during the first three months of the mission was to leave the radiation belts as soon as possible in order to minimize the degradation of the solar arrays and the star tracker CCDs.

The first and most critical problem came after the first revolution when a failure in the onboard Error Detection and Correction (EDAC) algorithm triggered an autonomous switch to the redundant computer in every orbit causing several reboots, finding the spacecraft in SAFE mode after every pericenter passage.

The analysis of the spacecraft telemetry pointed directly to a radiation-triggered problem with the EDAC interrupt routine.

The star trackers were also subject of frequent hiccups during the earth escape and caused some of the Electric Propulsion (EP) interruptions.

This phenomenon identified as the Opto-coupler Single Event Transient (OSET), initially seen in LEOP during the first firing using cathode B, was characterized by a rapid drop in Anode Current triggering the alarm 'Flame Out' bit causing the shutdown of the EP.

This was manually done during several months until an On Board Software Patch (OBSW) was developed to detect it and initiate an autonomous thruster restart.

The different kind of anomalies and the frequent interruptions in the thrust of the Electric Propulsion led to an increase of the ground stations support and overtime of the flight operations team who had to react quickly.

This concept permitted about eight times additional network coverage at no extra cost but originated unexpected overheads and conflicts.

It ultimately permitted additional contacts with the spacecraft during the early stage of the mission and an important increase of science during the Moon phase.

The Operations during the Moon phase become highly automated: the flight dynamics pointing was "menu driven" allowing more than 98% of commanding being generated by the Mission Planning System MPS.