Microlensing Observations in Astrophysics (MOA) is a collaborative project, involving researchers from New Zealand and Japan, to detect microlensing events from the Southern Hemisphere. One of its objectives is to search for exoplanets by this means, working closely with other groups in Australia and the United States. In January 1999, MOA, in collaboration with Microlensing Planet Search, announced that the microlensing event known as MACHO-98-BLG-35 was best interpreted as due to a planet with a mass somewhere between that of Neptune and Earth, orbiting its host star at about twice the Earth-Sun distance.