Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin shrugged off bad weather and lit up the world with its powerful New Glenn rocket on its first flight early Thursday The flight departed Cape Canaveral under cloudy night skies in a high-stakes race against Elon Musk's industry-leading rocket. SpaceX.

Like SpaceX's workhorse Falcon 9, New Glenn's first stage is designed to lift off the upper stage from the lower atmosphere and fly to the Blue Origin recovery ship on its own to land. Reusability is a key factor for Bezos to compete with Musk in the high-end space.

The booster completed its mission of pushing its upper stage into the lower atmosphere, but the telemetry froze as it descended toward its planned landing on the Jacklin, a recovery ship named for Bezos' mother. Blue Origin did not reveal the final stage. What happened. The moment of descent.

"We've probably lost the booster," a company commentator said a few minutes later.

At 2:03 a.m. ET, the mission began. The seven methane-burning BE-4 engines at the bottom of New Glenn's first stage roared, emitting dazzling flames and a ground-shaking roar.

Accelerating smoothly while consuming propellant and reducing weight, New Glenn raced away from Launch Pad 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in a brilliant blue-white plume, providing a welcome opportunity for Blue Origin employees, Local residents and tourists put on a spectacular show.

The launch was delayed a week later than planned due to bad weather at the booster landing area and a minor technical issue. But on Thursday, as the rocket climbed and disappeared from view, everything seemed to be going smoothly.

Three minutes and 10 seconds after liftoff, the rocket's first-stage engine shut down, triggering stage separation and igniting the two hydrogen-burning BE-3U engines that power the rocket's second stage.

As the upper stage continues to climb into orbit, the first stage briefly glides upward before arcing back to Earth, tracking Jacklin hundreds of miles downstream in the Atlantic Ocean. NASA's WB-57 photoreconnaissance aircraft was flying nearby and recorded the flight with a high-resolution camera.

The three engines were re-ignited as planned to slow the booster for re-entry, but during the burn, video showed one of the engines freezing and telemetry on the screen stopped while showing an altitude of 84,226 feet and a speed of 4,285 miles /Hour. It was unclear whether the rocket exploded or otherwise malfunctioned and crashed into the sea.

But company officials said before the launch that lessons would be learned from any anomalies and another flight would be carried out in the coming months.

"We have another product (in production) that will be here very soon," Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp told CBS News earlier this week offline." "So we'll be flying either way (again) in the spring.

While SpaceX tested its Falcon 9 landing system via an ocean splashdown before attempting an actual landing, Blue Origin chose to try it out on the rocket's first flight. This is based in part on the company's experience launching and landing suborbital New Shepard rockets, which are used to carry space tourists, researchers and payloads on brief up and down flights in the lower atmosphere.

Even so, company officials acknowledged the challenge, naming New Glen's first phase "So You Told Me There Was a Chance."

"There's no doubt that the first landing attempt was a little bold," Limp said before launch.

But landing the first stage is just one of several major goals. The main goal of this flight is to put the upper stage and a spacecraft designed by Blue Origin called Blue Ring Pathfinder into orbit. Blue Ring is a space tug that can host or deploy multiple satellites in different orbits while providing onboard computer support and even services.

On its first flight, the blue ring will remain attached to New Glenn's upper stage throughout the planned 5 hours and 50 minutes of the mission.

The flight plan calls for two upper-stage engine firings, the second about an hour after liftoff, to put the vehicle and the accompanying Blue Ring Pathfinder into an elliptical orbit with a maximum altitude of approximately 12,000 miles and a minimum altitude of 12,000 miles. . Approximately 1,500 miles.

The Blue Ring features a deployable solar array that stretches 144 feet, has 13 ports for hosted and deployable payloads, and can accommodate satellites or other instruments weighing up to 2.5 tons on its upper deck.

There will be no such payload on the first flight, but the spacecraft's systems will undergo a series of tests to learn more about how the spacecraft performs in space.

Regardless of the outcome of Thursday's mission, Blue Origin will face an uphill battle against SpaceX, which currently dominates the commercial launch market.

SpaceX began launching Falcon 9 rockets in 2010 and has since launched 436 Falcon 9 series rockets, with only two in-flight failures.

Complicating matters for Blue Origin, SpaceX is testing a massive, fully reusable rocket called Starship Super Heavy. It is the most powerful rocket ever built and, once operational, is expected to play a major role in launching payloads into low-Earth orbit, the moon and beyond.

SpaceX plans to launch a Starship Super Heavy from the company's manufacturing and testing center in Boca Chica, Texas, on Thursday at 5 p.m. ET.

After lifting the starship out of the lower atmosphere, the Super Heavy booster will fly back to the launch pad, where a giant robotic arm will try to pull it out of mid-air. At the same time, the Starship upper stage will orbit the Earth, launch 10 Starlink satellite models, and then simulate a landing in the Indian Ocean.

Since 2019, Falcon 9 has made approximately 225 flights, launching 7,700 Starlink internet satellites, with plans to launch thousands more satellites. The company already has millions of customers around the world, giving it a strong lead over potential competitors.

It remains to be seen how Blue Origin and other rocket manufacturers will work with SpaceX, the Falcon family of rockets and Starship Super Heavy.

But Blue Origin already has a backlog of satellites waiting to launch on New Glenn and is awaiting certification to launch high-priority national security payloads, NASA probes and other civilian satellites.

Amazon plans to launch more than 3,232 broadband relay stations called Project Kuiper to provide space-based Internet services in direct competition with SpaceX's Starlink.

Blue Origin said it has booked 80 launches using New Glenn rockets and boosters from European consortium Arianespace, United Launch Alliance and even SpaceX to put data relay stations into orbit.

"In general, I'm very bullish on the space sector," Limp said. "I think there are going to be a lot of winners in this space. Probably SpaceX, I think Blue will be there as well. But I also believe there will be new companies that we've never heard of. There are some entrepreneurs out there." There's nothing there yet Form a space company that will participate in negotiations. "