On Sunday, a Japanese aerospace startup launched a spacecraft to the Moon after several delays, a first for Japan and a private company.

ispace Inc’s HAKUTO-R mission took off smoothly from Cape Canaveral, Florida, after its SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket inspections caused two delays.

At an observation party in Tokyo, more than a hundred people applauded enthusiastically as the rocket blasted into space.

The US, Russia, and China national space agencies have achieved soft landings on the Moon in the past half century, but no company has.

The mission’s success will also be a milestone in Japan-US space cooperation when China has become more competitive and can no longer ride on Russian rockets following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

It would also end Japan’s space-filled days after billionaire Yusaku Maezawa revealed on Friday that he wants SpaceX to send eight astronauts to the Moon as early as next year.

The name HAKUTO refers to the white rabbit who lives on the Moon in Japanese folklore, in stark contrast to what Westerners think of as lunar people. The project was a Google Lunar XPRIZE finalist before being revived as a commercial venture.

The following year is the Year of the Rabbit in the Asian calendar. The spacecraft, made in Germany, is expected to land on the Moon in late April.

The company expects this to be the first of many government and commercial payload deliveries. The iSpace spacecraft is designed to send a small NASA satellite into lunar orbit to search for water deposits before touching the Atlas Crater.

The M1 lander will deploy two robotic rovers, a baseball-sized two-wheeled unit from Japan’s JAXA space agency and a four-wheeled Rashid Explorer built by the United Arab Emirates. It will also carry an experimental solid-state battery from the NGK spark plug company.

“The Rashid rover is part of the UAE’s ambitious space programme,” said Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum, Ruler of Dubai and Vice President of the UAE. He witnessed the launch at the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre.

Privately funded iSpace has a contract with NASA to deliver payloads starting in 2025 and plans to establish a permanent lunar colony by 2040.