Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin successfully launched its New Glenn rocket on its maiden flight Thursday morning from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Blue Origin has now become the first private space-launch company in the Western world to successfully reach orbit on its first attempt using a rocket of its own design, as reported by PCMag.
Similar to SpaceX’s Falcon 9, the New Glenn’s first stage is engineered to autonomously return to a Blue Origin recovery ship after boosting the upper stage beyond the lower atmosphere. While the primary goal of reaching orbit was a success, Blue Origin confirmed the booster was lost during descent. “We knew landing our booster on the first try was an ambitious goal,” said Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp in a press release.
Thursday’s launch marks a new era for Blue Origin as the company’s success with New Glenn is crucial for establishing its place in the launch market and competing with Elon Musk’s SpaceX— which has maintained industry dominance in recent years. Musk himself acknowledged the achievement, congratulating Bezos on X writing, “Well done, @JeffBezos and the Blue Origin team!”
Looking ahead, Blue Origin aims to use New Glenn for launching satellites, spacecraft and even lunar missions with its own designs. The company has already secured contracts with NASA, the Space Force, Amazon’s Project Kuiper and other key partners. Additionally, Blue Origin is also working to certify New Glenn with the U.S. Space Force for the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) program.
