The space company owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has launched its first rocket into orbit in a bid to challenge the dominance of Elon Musk's SpaceX.
The New Glenn rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 02:02 local time (07:02 GMT).
It pits the world's two richest men against each other in a commercial space race, competing to launch bigger and more powerful rockets.
Both want to fill the skies with more satellites, run private space stations, and provide transportation for people's regular trips to the moon.
“Congratulations on reaching orbit on the first try!” Musk wrote in a post to Bezos on X.
Dave Limp, CEO of Bezos's space company Blue Origin, said he was “very proud.”
“We will learn a lot from today and try again in our next launch this spring,” he added.
Bezos' team overcame technical obstacles that delayed the launch earlier this week when ice formation halted the launch.
Blue Origin employees and crowds gathered near Cape Canaveral and cheered as the 98-meter-tall rocket rocketed into orbit.
But the company failed to land New Glenn's main or booster rocket engine on a platform in the Atlantic Ocean.
It had hoped the rocket would be reusable for future launches, but about 20 minutes into the flight, the company confirmed it had lost the engine.
Bezos' Blue Origin has struggled to keep up with the pace set by SpaceX. But this launch will be seen as a big step forward for the company.
The New Glenn rocket is named after John Glenn, the first American astronaut to orbit Earth in more than 60 years.
The rocket is more powerful than SpaceX's most widely used rocket, the Falcon 9. It can also carry more satellites, and Bezos wants to use it as part of his Kuiper project, which aims to deploy thousands of low-Earth satellites to provide broadband. Services.
This project will directly compete with Musk's Starlink service.
Blue Origin MediaJeff Bezos founded Blue Origin 25 years ago, claiming he wanted “millions of people working and living in space.”
For many years, the project sent a smaller, reusable rocket called New Shepard to the edge of Earth's atmosphere. It has carried passengers and cargo, including Bezos himself in 2021.
But Blue Origin has significantly outpaced SpaceX, which launched its rockets 134 times last year.
SpaceX's new generation of rockets, called Starship, is still more powerful. The company hopes to launch it on its seventh test flight later today.
Some experts say that the success of the New Glenn rocket will create real competition between the two companies and could reduce the costs of space operations.
“What you will see is these two companies challenging each other to make even greater strides,” says Dr. Simeon Barber of the Open University in the UK.
Governments have historically spent billions building rockets and sending missions into space.
But NASA is increasingly moving away from relying solely on public funds and issuing huge contracts to private companies to provide rockets and other space services.
Elon Musk's SpaceX has already received space contracts worth billions of dollars.
His close relationship with the next US president, Donald Trump, could further strengthen his company.
