Jeff Bezos' New Glenn rocket successfully reaches orbit on first attempt
The Blue Origin program has launched a rocket with a spacecraft as cargo, which will remain in Earth's orbit. The launch had to be postponed several times.
A Blue Origin New Glenn rocket lifts off from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Space company Blue Origin, owned by tycoon Jeff Bezos, succeeded Thursday in launching and putting its New Glenn rocket into orbit for the first time.
The 321-foot-tall spacecraft, equivalent to a 32-story building, lifted off at 02H03 (07H03 GMT) from Cape Canaveral space base in Florida.
With this mission, named NG-1, Bezos, founder of Amazon, is directly challenging Elon Musk, the world's richest man, whose company SpaceX dominates the orbital launch market with its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets.
"Congrats on making it to orbit on the first try! @JeffBezos," Musk posted on his X platform after the launch.
Blue Origin already has years of experience taking tourists into space for a few minutes thanks to its much smaller New Shepard rockets. However, until now, it had not launched any flights into orbit.
The inaugural launch of this mighty rocket was canceled Monday at the last minute because of a technical problem.
Physically, New Glenn outperforms the 230-foot-tall Falcon 9 and is designed for larger payloads.
Its mass capacity falls between that of the Falcon 9 and its larger counterpart, the Falcon Heavy, but it boasts the advantage of a wider payload bay, making it ideal for bulkier payloads.
Blue Origin already has a contract with NASA to launch two Mars probes aboard the New Glenn. The rocket will also play a key role in deploying Project Kuiper, a satellite initiative aimed at competing with the Starlink internet network.
For now, however, SpaceX holds the lead in this space race, while other competitors such as United Launch Alliance, Arianespace and Rocket Lab, lag far behind.
Like Musk, Bezos has a lifetime passion for space. However, while Musk dreams of colonizing Mars, Bezos envisions relocating heavy industry off-planet to floating space platforms to preserve Earth, "the blue origin of humanity."
Bezos founded Blue Origin in 2000, two years before Musk established SpaceX, but took a more cautious approach to development, in contrast to the philosophy of his rivals.
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