Two robotic landers are set to begin their journeys to the moon Wednesday morning, when they launch aboard a SpaceX rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center.

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.

With the nearly full moon shining overhead, two companies, one American and the other headquartered in Japan, launched privately-developed robotic lunar landers early Wednesday, sharing a sky-lighting ride to space atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.