By Joey Roulette and Kantaro Komiya ORLANDO, Florida/TOKYO (Reuters) -Two moon landers, one from Japan's ispace and another from U.S. space firm Firefly, began their journeys into space on Wednesday with SpaceX's unusual double moonshot launch,

The Blue Ghost mission is one of four Firefly is working on as part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative. The initiative is part of NASA's larger Artemis campaign to establish a long-term presence on the Moon and prepare for the exploration of Mars.

Launching at 1:11 a.m. EST on Jan. 15, a SpaceX rocket carried the lunar lander built by Cedar Park-based Firefly Aerospace Inc. into space. Its eventual destination: the moon. The 45-day journey from the Earth to the Moon carries with it multiple scientific instruments as part of NASA ’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services, or CLPS, initiative.