CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — In a two-for-one moon landing, SpaceX launched a pair of lunar landers on Wednesday for U.S. and Japanese companies looking to quickly launch operations on Earth's dusty companion.

The two landers launched in the middle of the night from NASA's Kennedy Space Center, the latest in a series of private spacecraft targeting the moon. To save money, they carpooled and took different routes around the island during the months-long journey.

It takes 2 hours for Tokyo-based ispace, the company's first lander to crash into the moon two years ago. This time, it's carrying a rover with a shovel to collect lunar dirt for study and plans to test potential food and water sources for future explorers.

Texas-based Firefly Aerospace is working on 10 lunar experiments for NASA, including a vacuum device to collect dust, a drill to measure subsurface temperatures, and a tool that future moonwalkers could use to prevent spacesuits from getting stuck on Devices with sharp, abrasive particles. and equipment.

The blue ghost of the firefly - named after a species of firefly in the southeastern United States - should reach the moon first. The 6-foot-6-inch (2-meter-tall) lander will attempt to land in Mare Crisium, a volcanic plain in northern latitudes, in early March.

A slightly larger space lander called Resilient will take four to five months to get there, with the goal of landing in the Sea of ​​Frigoris in late May or early June, or even further north on the near side of the moon.

"We don't think of this as a race. Some say the 'race to the moon,' but it's not about speed," ispace founder CEO Takeshi Hakamada said this week at Cape Canaveral.

Both Hakamada and Firefly CEO Jason King acknowledged that there are still challenges ahead, given the debris scattered across the lunar surface. Since the 1960s, only five countries have successfully sent spacecraft to the moon: the former Soviet Union, the United States, China, India and Japan.

"We've done everything we can in terms of design and engineering," King said. Even so, he pinned an Irish shamrock to his jacket lapel Tuesday night for good luck.

The United States remains the only country to have landed astronauts. NASA's Artemis program, the successor to the Apollo program, aims to return astronauts to the moon by the end of the century.

Before then, "we're going to be sending a lot of science and technology ahead of time to prepare for this," NASA science mission manager Nikki Fox said on the eve of launch.

If the landing is successful, both spacecraft will operate in constant daylight for two weeks, shutting down once night falls.

Once it touches down on the lunar surface, ispace's 11-pound rover will stay near the lander, traveling in circles for hundreds of yards (meters) at less than an inch (a few centimeters) per second. The rover has its own special transport to drop on the lunar dust: a toy-sized red house designed by a Swedish artist.

NASA will pay Firefly $101 million for the mission and another $44 million for the experiments. Hakamada declined to reveal the cost of ispace's six restarted experimental missions, saying it was less than the first mission, which exceeded $100 million.

Houston-based Intuitive Machines will launch NASA's second moon landing program at the end of February. Last year, the company achieved the first U.S. moon landing in more than half a century, landing sideways near the South Pole but still successfully operating.