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.

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. The two landers rocketed away in the middle of the night from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center,

The SpaceX launch and private lander contracts are the latest to fall under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative — the first phase of the Artemis moon exploration program that’s set to launch its first crewed mission in April 2026.