US aerospace startup Astrobotic — a company that wants to establish a delivery service to the Moon — says it will fly its very first lunar mission on top of the United Launch Alliance’s future rocket, named Vulcan. In fact, Astrobotic’s spacecraft, a lunar lander named Peregrine, will be Vulcan’s very first payload ever, scheduled for launch sometime in 2021. If everything stays on track, the mission could send the first private vehicle to the surface of the Moon.

Astrobotic is one of many companies with its sights set on the lunar surface. The company, based out of Pittsburgh, says its goal is to build vehicles that can ferry instruments and payloads to the Moon for research organizations, space agencies, companies, and more. “Our goal is to make the Moon accessible to the world,” John Thornton, CEO of Astrobotic, told The Verge in 2017. “It’s making it possible for every space agency and every corporation and even individuals to send payloads to the lunar surface.” Its inaugural vehicle, Peregrine, stands at around six feet tall and is capable of carrying nearly 200 pounds of cargo to the lunar surface.

NASA recently tasked Astrobotic and two other companies with sending robotic landers to the lunar surface within the next couple of years as part of the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services, or CLPS, program. The missions are meant to be the first in a series of NASA-sponsored lunar trips, leading up to the eventual return of humans to the Moon. Astrobotic received an award of $79.5 million as part of the deal, and the company hopes to fly up to 14 NASA payloads on the first flight of its Peregrine lander. Astrobotic says it has also signed up 16 other customers for the ride, who will provide additional payloads.

Originally, Astrobotic had hoped to launch the first Peregrine mission on ULA’s currently operational vehicle, the Atlas V rocket, as early as this year. However, Astrobotic has since pushed back its launch date. The company also noted during its CLPS selection that it was reevaluating launch options for the flight. Astrobotic says it selected Vulcan during a very “competitive commercial procurement.” “When we launch the first lunar lander from American soil since Apollo, onboard the first Vulcan Centaur rocket, it will be a historic day for the country and commercial enterprise,” Thornton said in a statement.

Vulcan is meant to be ULA’s next-generation rocket that will incorporate the design of the Atlas V and provide better performance. And since the Peregrine lander will be the rocket’s very first payload, ULA plans to use this mission as one of two flights needed to certify Vulcan to fly future satellites for the US Air Force. Vulcan’s second flight, scheduled for 2021, will be the first flight of Sierra Nevada Corporation’s cargo spaceplane, called the Dream Chaser.

With this flight, Astrobotic is also poised to be the first private company to land a vehicle intact on the surface of the Moon. Up until now, only three superpowers — the US, Russia, and China — have ever been able to touch down vehicles on the lunar surface. No private companies have been able to match this feat, though one came close. In April, an Israeli nonprofit named SpaceIL attempted to land the first privately funded lander on the Moon, but a glitch caused the vehicle’s engine to shut off prematurely, and the spacecraft slammed into the lunar dirt as a result. So the title of “first” private lunar lander is still unclaimed.

Meanwhile, Astrobotic is facing less competition from other companies in the race to the lunar surface. One of the three companies selected for the CLPS program, Orbit Beyond, already said it would not meet its 2020 launch deadline and dropped out of the initial race. The second company, Intuitive Machines, is aiming to launch its payload on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket around the same time as Astrobotic’s mission in 2021. It all depends on which company can stick the closest to its deadline.