The successful flight to orbit of the Amazon founder’s powerful rocket suggests it could grow into a credible competitor with Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

Bezos’ space company Blue Origin started at about the same time as Musk’s SpaceX but since then Musk’s firm has launched more than 400 of its Falcon 9 rockets into orbit and is testing out its giant Starship rocket which it hopes will send astronauts to the Moon and one day possibly on to Mars.

Blue Origin aborted the first launch attempt due to technical issues, but this Thursday, they successfully conducted their first test from Cape Canaveral. They achieved the main goal of orbiting safely but were unable to recover the reusable rocket booster on a maritime platform.

message posted on X. New Glenn is named after John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth. According to Blue Origin, the rocket is “engineered with the safety and redundancy required to fly ...

The 320-foot New Glenn rocket was initially scheduled to launch early Monday with a prototype satellite aboard.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' space dreams are ... while New Glenn honors John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth. At more than 320 feet high, New Glenn is a hulk compared with New Shepard.

The reusable spacecraft had been due to take off from Florida but the launch was halted as anomalies were detected after the countdown began

The mission, the culmination of a decade-long, multi-billion-dollar development journey, will include an attempt to land New Glenn’s first stage booster on a sea-fairing barge in the Atlantic Ocean 10 minutes after lift-off, while the rocket’s second stage continues toward orbit.

Founded by Amazon's Jeff Bezos ... New Glenn is named after the first American to orbit Earth, John Glenn. It is five times taller than Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket that carries paying ...

Blue Origin is key to Amazon's ability to compete with SpaceX Starlink. Jeff Bezos has finally done it. He's finally reached space with an honest-to-goodness orbital-class rocket. Ten years ago, Bezos ignited a feud with SpaceX founder Elon Musk when his Blue Origin rocket company launched a suborbital New Shepard rocket to the edge of space and then landed it back on Earth.

If New Glenn can continue to demonstrate its capabilities and (more crucially) its reliability, it has the potential to take some business that SpaceX would otherwise struggle to accommodate.

Blue Ghost and New Glenn started off the year right. Many more launches are on the way, and many can be watched online.