The two landers rocketed away in the middle of the night from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, the latest in a stream of private spacecraft aiming for the moon.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched lunar landers for Firefly Aerospace and the Japanese company ispace early this morning (Jan. 15).

The two robotic lunar landers —one from Firefly Aerospace based near Austin, Texas, and another from the Japanese space company ispace—will use their own small engines for the final maneuvers required to enter orbit around the Moon in the coming months.

A SpaceX rocket carrying two commercial lunar landers took off toward space early Wednesday morning in another step toward an era of private moon exploration. This carpool to the moon carried Blue Ghost,

Firefly's "Blue Moon" and ispace's "Resilience" are the latest in an ongoing push to gain private-sector experience exploring the moon.

One rocket, two missions: lunar landers built by US and Japanese companies launched their "rideshare" to the Moon on Wednesday, showcasing the private sector's growing role in space exploration.