Aboard Vulcan, a 200-foot (60-m) tall rocket with engines made by Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, is the Peregrine lunar lander built by space robotics firm Astrobotic.
If all goes well, Peregrine will mark the first United States soft landing on the moon since the final Apollo landing in 1972, and the first ever lunar landing by a private company - a feat that has proved elusive in recent years.
Peregrine is set to land on the moon on February 23 with scientific payloads aboard that will seek to gather data about the lunar surface ahead of planned future human missions.
The launch was a crucial first for United Launch Alliance (ULA). Vulcan has spent roughly a decade in development to replace ULA's workhorse Atlas V rocket and rival the reusable Falcon 9 from Elon Musk's SpaceX in the satellite launch market.
The last time the U.S. launched a moon-landing mission was in December 1972. Apollo 17's Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt became the 11th and 12th men to walk on the moon, closing out an era that has remained NASA's pinnacle.
