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,

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.

Blue Ghost's final descent to the Moon is tentatively scheduled for March 2. The target landing site is in Mare Crisium, an ancient 350-mile-wide (560-kilometer) impact basin in the northeast part of the near side of the Moon.

The two landers rocketed away in the middle of the night from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, the latest in a stream of private spacecraft aiming for 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.

A new year of lunar exploration kicked off early Wednesday, when two robotic landers and a small rover began their journeys to the moon.