Sort of.
Actually it’s a NASA spacecraft and it will be controlled from Houston as usual.
But the spacecraft is going to the Moon and it was launched from NZ so it counts as far as I’m concerned. Clearly the Rocket Lab booster configuration was powerful enough to send it on its way, even if it will take four months to get there. Plenty of other nations have not been able to do that, so Yay Us!
The mission is called CAPSTONE (Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment) and the whole idea is to test out the lunar orbit that will be required for the Gateway space station that will orbit the moon while astronauts transfer from Earth to the station and from the station to the surface of the Moon and back.
The mission is part of NASA’s 21st-century moon program named for Artemis, who in Greek mythology was a twin sister of Apollo. The program aims to return humans to the moon in 2024, more than half a century since the last Apollo moon landing.
Frankly I don’t think this is such a great idea compared to just building a base on the Moon itself and going straight there and back. Given the many poor decisions, planning and management of the whole Artemis program over the last fifteen years I’m not confident about this concept.
The orbit to be used is an unusual one; a great looping ellipse that flies over the Lunar Polar regions.
This will enable the best coverage for where the surface base will be established.
Mission planners are looking for spots that feature easy access to solar energy, good communication linkage with Earth and modest slopes that allow access to nearby Permanently Shadowed Regions, or PSRs in space speak. Researchers believe that PSRs likely contain water ice deposits. That resource could be extracted and processed into usable items, such as oxygen, water and rocket propellant.
The Shackleton-de Gerlache Ridge area is valuable real estate. While no location on the moon stays continuously illuminated, three points on the rim remain collectively sunlit for more than 90% of the year. These points are surrounded by topographic depressions that never receive sunlight, creating cold traps that can capture ices.
The Gateway orbit will also enable constant communication with Earth: no more of those blackout periods that happened when the Apollo spacecraft swung behind the Moon. It will also enable Gateway to be the primary communications hub for any other spacecraft orbiting the moon, such as the existing LRO, and other such comm nodes may be added to the orbit in the future.
All of this will also lead to putting colonies on Mars, where lava tubes could be used for the bases:
The lava tubes however would provide natural shielding from radiation, an interior space that can quickly be sealed, and a less harsh thermal environment, since the temperature would not experience the day/night cycle.
Putting a colony in these tubes however will likely involve politics. Because, as the paper notes, these tubes might also be ideal locations for finding past (or even existing) Martian life, there is going to be opposition should anyone want to put a colony within them.
Although SpaceX may get there first and they will have their own plans.
Meantime you can re-watch the Rocketlab CAPSTONE launch here and see all of this explained more fully.
No Minister 
The rocks and dust apollo brought back, was there any indication of mineral wealth?
There is, and not just from Apollo but also from the LRO and other Moon-observing platforms over the decades:
Of course “valuable” has a different context than Earth. No seams of coal but plain old water ice will be incredibly valuable for rocket fuel and it seems it’s there at the Lunar South Pole.