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A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket hurtled toward space on Wednesday, carrying two lunar landers on a journey to our nearest celestial neighbor. That began what is expected to be a busy year of lunar missions amid a renewed race to establish a long-term human presence on the planet’s lunar surface.

The SpaceX rocket lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 1:11 a.m. ET.

The rocket’s spherical nose cone housed the two lunar landers, which came from two different countries. The first is Blue Ghost, a 2-meter-tall lunar lander developed by Firefly Aerospace, a company based in Cedar Park, Texas.

The unmanned mission marks Firefly’s first attempt to send a spacecraft to the lunar surface. The company is a contractor for NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS), part of the space agency’s Artemis program – a framework under which NASA aims to put humans on the moon for the first time in more than 50 years.

“It’s a good time for the lunar economy,” Firefly Aerospace CEO Jason Kim told CNN in December, adding that he was “100% confident in our team’s abilities” – including success for the first flight is not guaranteed by Blue Ghost.

The Falcon 9 rocket’s cargo hold carries a 7.5-foot (2.3-meter) passenger. Lunar lander from Tokyo-based company Ispace. Wednesday’s launch marked the start of the company’s second attempt to send one of its Hakuto-R spacecraft to the moon.

Ispace is a company whose goal is to sell its services to space agencies or private companies that want to bring science or other payloads to the moon. Much like Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic Technology, which developed the Peregrine lunar lander, which met a fiery end on its first mission attempt January 2024, the company has its roots in the Google Lunar XPrize. The competition offered $20 million to any company that could place a lander on the lunar surface to spur space technology innovation in the private sector. (The competition ultimately ended in 2018 without a winner because the development processes took longer than expected.)

Ispace, now a listed company on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, made its first attempt to land on the moon in 2023, but the Hakuto-R spacecraft used in that mission eventually crashed, leaving a new pockmark on the lunar surface. The company later attributed the failed landing attempt to inaccurate data about the spacecraft’s altitude.

But Ispace said it was back – armed with lessons learned – and ready for a soft touchdown the second time around.

“We collected huge amounts of data in the first mission, very valuable data,” Jumpei Nozaki, the company’s chief financial officer, said Monday. “So we’re going to use this mission two 100%. And yes, we are confident of carrying out a successful mission this time.”

The lunar landers Ispace Hakuto-R and Firefly Aerospace Blue Ghost fly into space in the same way, but take different paths to the moon.

The Hakuto-R and Blue Ghost landers are now beginning their individual journey.

Ultimately, Blue Ghost will orbit Earth for about 25 days before making a four-day trek to the moon and spending a few weeks in lunar orbit. The spacecraft is expected to make its exciting landing attempt about 45 days after launch.

The Hakuto-R lander, called Resilience, takes an even slower path to the moon.

“It’s a low-energy trajectory,” Nozaki said. “But it’s not necessarily a bad thing. During this long journey we can verify many types of systems.”

The company has not publicly announced Resilience’s expected landing date, but Nozaki told CNN that the spacecraft will follow a similar path to the last Hakuto-R mission – it will take four to five months to reach the moon.

Hakuto-R’s first mission failed because the spacecraft miscalculated its descent while flying over a crater and fell about 5 kilometers to the ground, according to Ispace.

“Almost everything worked perfectly – propulsion system, communication system and also structure,” Nozaki said of the first Hakuto-R mission. “The problem was the software and the height measurement has a problem.”

A NASA spacecraft captured an image of the impact crater created by the crash landing.

What’s on board the Blue Ghost lunar lander?

Blue Ghost will attempt to land on the lunar surface near Mons Latreille, an ancient volcanic feature in a more than 300-mile-wide (483-kilometer) basin called Mare Crisium, or “Sea of ​​Crises,” on the far eastern edge of the near side of the moon.

On board Blue Ghost is a group of scientific instruments and technology demonstrations for testing satellite navigation, radiation-adapted computers, self-cleaning glass that can remove lunar dust, and a “Lunar PlanetVac” for collecting and sorting soil samples on the Moon. according to Firefly Aerospace.

Kim, the company’s CEO, said he is also excited about the opportunity to share images and footage that the Blue Ghost lander might capture.

“There is a phenomenon called lunar horizon glow that only the Apollo 15 and 17 astronauts saw with their eyes,” Kim told CNN. “We’ll be able to capture that in 4K x 4K high-definition video and share it with the rest of the world.”

The glow of the lunar horizon occurs when photons from the sun react with the lunar soil, the regolith, causing electrostatic particles to float. The swirled dust scatters the light.

Blue Ghost will operate on the lunar surface for approximately 14 days until its landing zone is moved to the lunar night. During the dark period, temperatures can drop to minus 280 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 173 degrees Celsius), forcing the spacecraft to stop operating.

Under the motto “Never Quit the Lunar Quest,” Ispace is looking for redemption with its Resilience Lander.

The company’s first lunar landing attempt aimed to place a Hakuto-R lander in Atlas Crater at the northeast corner of the moon’s far side.

In this go-around, Ispace is targeting a different location on the moon: a 750-mile-long (1,200 kilometer) plain called Mare Frigoris – or “Sea of ​​Cold” – located in the moon’s far north.

Mare Frigoris is significantly flatter than the Atlas crater region and may offer easier terrain to navigate. In a statement, Ispace said the new landing site was chosen because it offered “flexibility.”

The region also offers ideal conditions for exploration by a miniature rover called Tenacious, the company said. The vehicle, which is 10 inches (26 centimeters) tall and weighs about 11 pounds (5 kilograms), is designed to eject from the Resilience Lander and explore the surrounding terrain.

The rover, developed by Ispace’s European branch with co-funding from the Luxembourg Space Agency, is equipped with a small shovel to collect a sample of lunar soil. Ispace intends to transfer ownership to NASA – but the sample itself will remain on the moon, according to Nozaki. (NASA did not comment on the matter during a press conference Tuesday.)

The lander itself also carries experiments and technical demonstrations, including a water electrolyzer and a module that will test algae-based food production. The payloads were provided by both companies and academic institutions.

Additionally, there are commemorative objects on board the spacecraft, such as a metal plate paying homage to the Japanese sci-fi franchise Gundam, and artwork.

Swedish artist Mikael Genberg has contributed a red miniature house called “Moonhouse”. Genberg has been striving to build a red house on the lunar surface for more than two decades.

“The Moon House, the first house on the Moon, may be an expression of humanity’s ability to achieve the seemingly unattainable through transgressive thought and collaboration, and perhaps a symbol of humanity’s eternal and collective aspiration; a perspective on existence and (a) view of the earth,” says a website about the art project.

The project hopes to pursue a number of other novelties, works of art and curiosities that have been part of past lunar missions.

A series of sculptures by Jeff Koons called “Moon Phases,” for example, flew on Houston-based Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus lunar lander last year and became the first “authorized” work of art on the moon.