NASA's Blue Ghost lunar lander is on its way to the moon, soaring through space with a tiny lunar rover called Tenacious. "After all the testing conducted and mission simulations completed, we're now fully focused on execution as we look to complete our on-orbit operations,

The spacecraft built and operated by Texas-based Firefly Aerospace launched in the early Monday hours from Florida aboard a SpaceX rocket.

An illustration of a private U.S. lander on the surface of the moon built by Texas-based company Firefly Aerospace. The company’s Blue Ghost lander is carrying a suite of scientific instruments to the moon, including an experiment to detect and use GPS satellite signals on the lunar surface.

SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket carrying a pair of lunar landers into space early Wednesday, sending Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost and ispace's Resilience on their lengthy journeys to the moon.

Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lunar lander launched at 1:11 a.m. Wednesday from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on the SpaceX rocket before separating an hour later. The lunar lander — part of a mission known as Blue Ghost Mission 1 or Ghost Riders in the Sky — will spend 45 days in orbit and 14 days on the surface of the moon.

The mission featured two robotic lunar landers: one from Texas-based Firefly Aerospace and another from the Japanese space company ispace. Both landers, each roughly the size

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.

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.

In a two-for-one moonshot, SpaceX launched a pair of lunar landers Wednesday for U.S. and Japanese companies looking to jumpstart business on Earth's dusty sidekick.