Robotic vehicles from Firefly Aerospace of Texas and Ispace of Japan parted ways early Wednesday after being launched on the same SpaceX rocket. Both are aiming for the lunar surface.

Early on Tuesday morning (Jan. 15), a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket sent Blue Ghost and Resilience — lunar landers built by Firefly Aerospace and the Tokyo-based company ispace, respectively — into the final frontier from Florida's Space Coast.

Two moon landers, one from Japan's ispace and another from U.S. space firm Firefly, began their journeys into space on Wednesday with SpaceX's unusual double moonshot launch, underscoring the global rush to examine the lunar surface.

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,