Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket has reached orbit for the first time, bolstering Jeff Bezos' ambitions to challenge Elon Musk's SpaceX in the satellite launch market.
The 98-meter-long heavy-lift rocket blasted off from the Space Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 2:03 a.m. Thursday, five years behind schedule and about an hour before the launch window. The countdown came to a halt after what Blue Origin described as a "wayward ship" straying into launch range.
Within four minutes, the booster stage successfully separated, and after about 13 minutes of flight, the rocket reached orbit, and applause and cheers erupted from the Blue Origin Mission Control Center at the launch site.
However, attempts to return the booster to an ocean platform to prove the rocket's reusability failed.
New Glenn's maiden flight paves the way for a new era of spaceflight, pitting two of the world's richest men against each other in a race to extend humanity's reach to the moon and beyond.
New Glenn, named after American astronaut John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, is designed to challenge the dominance of Musk's SpaceX in the launch market. Of the world's record 259 orbital launches in 2024, more than half were completed by SpaceX's Falcon rocket.
New Glenn will also deliver satellites for Project Kuiper, Amazon's proposed space-based broadband constellation to compete with SpaceX's Starlink and eventually Blue Origin's Blue Moon lunar lander.
However, as SpaceX prepares for the seventh test flight of its giant reusable Starship rocket, also expected on Thursday, the rocket will face its own challenges.
Many industry players expect Starship to significantly reduce launch costs once it enters commercial operation.
New Glenn has one of the largest cargo bays in the launch industry, the rocket's fairing section, which is 22m high and 7m in diameter. However, its payload into low-Earth orbit is 45 tons, a fraction of Starship's 150 tons.
In addition, although the current launch capacity is insufficient, management consulting firm McKinsey predicts that the arrival of new rockets such as "Starship" and "New Glenn" will lead to oversupply starting around 2028, thus putting greater pressure on pricing.
The rocket's first stage is powered by seven BE-4 engines fueled by liquefied natural gas, producing more than 3.8 million pounds of thrust. Its second stage uses two smaller BE-3U engines, fueled by liquid oxygen and hydrogen.
New Glenn also carries a demonstration version of Blue Origin's multi-purpose Blue Ring spacecraft, designed to provide a range of mobile services in space. The flight, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense Innovation, will test Blue Ring's core flight, ground systems and combat capabilities.
Blue Origin has not disclosed the number of missions New Glenn is scheduled to fly. However, the company said it has several New Glenn rockets in production, with customers including NASA, direct equipment satellite startup AST SpaceMobile, multiple telecommunications providers and other U.S. government groups.