Two lunar landers built by private companies in the United States and Japan left Earth on a SpaceX rocket as part of a joint trip to the moon.
The Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 01:09 local time (06:09 GMT) on Wednesday, carrying landing vehicles belonging to the American company Firefly Aerospace and the Japanese company ispace.
The landers will eventually separate once they reach lunar orbit and conduct independent explorations.
It is the latest in a growing number of commercial missions to the Moon.
Firefly, Blue Space, is expected to take about 45 days to reach the Moon, once it separates from a SpaceX rocket.
It will then drill, collect samples and take X-ray images of Earth's magnetic field to “advance research on future human missions to the Moon and provide insight into how space weather affects the planet,” according to SpaceX.
Meanwhile, ispace's Resilence lander will take up to five months to reach the lunar surface, where it will deploy a rover to explore and attempt to capture loose surface materials known as regolith.
NASA is supporting this endeavor, which, if successful, will be the largest commercial delivery to the Moon to date.
Intuitive machines became last year The first commercial company to put a lander on the moonThis is an achievement that has only been achieved before by the United States, the Soviet Union, China, India and Japan.
Separately, SpaceX is also conducting the seventh orbital flight test of its Starship rocket, which is scheduled to lift off from Texas at 16:00 local time (22:00 GMT).
