Elon Musk's SpaceX to launch two lunar probes early Wednesday morning

Elon Musk's SpaceX will launch two unmanned lunar missions on Wednesday morning, marking the first lunar launches of the new year. 

The two missions will start together at approximately 1:11 a.m. Eastern, out of Florida. But the SpaceX rocket will then separate the two robotic landers and a small rover for two separate missions. The modules will go to different areas of the moon, according to NBC News.

The plan is to release the first module approximately an hour and five minutes after liftoff, followed by the second about 30 minutes later.

The first mission is part of NASA's Artemis program, which hopes to eventually send astronauts back to the moon. The "Blue Ghost" lander, developed by the Texas-based Firefly Aerospace, will land in a region of the moon known as Mare Crisium, which is believed to be the site of an ancient asteroid impact.

The second mission, which is run by a Japanese company called ispace, features a lander called Resilience and a small rover named Tenacious. The mission will touch down on the moon's far northern side, in a region called Mare Frigoris.

The first mission, whose journey should take 45 days, will seek to inform future manned expeditions by providing information on the lunar landscape and terrain. The lander is equipped with 10 NASA instruments, which will be used to gather information on the moon's surface. 

“This is a scientifically strategic and fruitful location that we zeroed in on because our future astronaut explorers will be able to use human intuition to be able to pick up scientifically interesting samples and bring them back to Earth,” NASA's associate administrator of the Science Mission Directorate Nicola Fox said at a Tuesday news briefing.

Readers who want to witness the launch virtually can tune in here starting at 12:30 a.m. Eastern.

 Misty Severi is a news reporter for Just The News. You can follow her on X for more coverage.