SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from Florida on Wednesday, sending two commercial moon landers into space.
One lander is the Resilience, made by Japanese company ispace. It's ispace's second attempt at a moon landing, after a first try in 2023 failed due to an altitude miscalculation.
The other lander, named Blue Ghost, is the first by Texas-based Firefly Aerospace.
According to an ispace executive, Resilience is carrying $16 million worth of customer missions and six payloads in total, including an in-house "Micro Rover" that will collect lunar samples.
Firefly's Blue Ghost aims to reach the moon 45 days after launch - around March 2. It's carrying 11 payloads from a range of customers, most of them funded by NASA.
NASA's move to fund public-private missions, like Firefly's Blue Ghost, is aimed at studying the moon's surface and stimulating private lunar demand, before the agency sends humans there through its Artemis program.
NASA / RUSSIAN SPACE AGENCY - ROSCOSMOS / REUTERS / TV TOKYO