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Jeff Bezos' New Glenn rocket has launched. This is her first flight

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On Thursday, Blue Origin's giant New Glenn rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The rocket's second stage has reached orbit, achieving the long-awaited milestone and main goal of the mission. This is a huge leap for Jeff Bezos' company, which intends to compete with Elon Musk's SpaceX in the industry of launching satellites into orbit.

The start took place when it was a few minutes after 8 a.m. on Thursday in Poland. The huge rocket, named New Glenn after astronaut John Glenn, the first American to take part in an orbital flight, is 98 meters high.

Hundreds of employees at Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin cheered as the rocket's second stage reached orbit, achieving a long-awaited milestone and primary mission goal.

READ ALSO: Elon Musk's Starship “disappeared” after launch

– We have achieved our most important goal, we have reached orbit safely – said Blue Origin's deputy head of international and commercial sales, Ariane Corell. However, she added that the company failed to recover the booster, which was supposed to detach from the second stage of the rocket and land back on Earth. – We lost contact with the booster a few minutes after take-off – she said. The first stage of the rocket was to land on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean. Jeff Bezos, in an interview with Reuters, said that recovering the booster would be the “cherry on the cake” of the mission, but its main objectives had been achieved.

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According to Reuters, this was Blue Origin's first mission to Earth orbit in 25 years since the company was founded. Jeff Bezos watched the launch from several kilometers away at Blue Origin's mission control center.

The mission, the culmination of ten years of multi-billion-dollar work, was originally scheduled to launch in 2020.

They will investigate the cause of the failure

“The success of Thursday's mission makes New Glenn's next planned flight to take place in the spring,” Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp said in a statement. The company wants to conduct an investigation into the cause of the booster landing failure.

New Glenn is expected to continue dozens of missions worth hundreds of millions of dollars, including 27 launches for Amazon's Kuiper satellite internet network, which will compete with SpaceX's Starlink service.

Competition for SpaceX

According to the assumptions of its creators, the machine is capable of carrying large loads into space – it can carry 45 tons at one time. Thanks to this, it will compete with Elon Musk's SpaceX company, which has dominated in recent years. What makes the Blue Origin rocket stand out is the design of the payload fairing, a system that protects the equipment carried. It is wide, which allows larger payloads to be placed into orbit.

As Reuters describes, the New Glenn's cargo bay holds the first prototype of Blue Origin's Blue Ring vehicle, an agile spacecraft that the company plans to sell to the Pentagon and commercial customers for national security and satellite missions. Getting the spacecraft into its intended orbit during the rocket's inaugural launch would be a rare achievement for a space company, Reuters adds.

As Blue Origin representatives explained, some New Glenn systems will be reusable. According to the plan, the first stage of the rocket can be used up to 25 times if it manages to land stably.

New Glenn rocket launchEnex

Another try

Today's launch was the third attempt to put New Glenn into space. The first one was carried out on January 10, but then the creators' plans were thwarted by unfavorable weather conditions. Two days later, the launch was canceled due to technical problems.

Three general managers oversaw the development of New Glenn, and the project encountered numerous delays. Late last year, Jeff Bezos accelerated work at Blue Origin, prioritizing the development of the rocket.

Main photo source: 2025 Cable News Network All Rights Reserved



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