Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin launches New Glenn rocket on test flight

The rocket’s first attempt to launch on Monday was scrubbed around because ice had accumulated on a propellant line.

Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket has blasted off from Florida on its first mission to space, an inaugural step into Earth’s orbit for Jeff Bezos’s space company.

Thirty storeys tall, standing at 98 metres (321.5 feet), with a reusable first stage, New Glenn launched at about 2am (07:00 GMT) from Blue Origin’s launchpad at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in its second lift-off attempt this week.

The rocket’s first attempt to launch on Monday was scrubbed around because ice had accumulated on a propellant line.

On Thursday, the company cited no issues before the launch.

The mission – a decade-long multibillion-dollar project – included a first-stage booster landing in the Atlantic Ocean, while the rocket’s second stage continues towards orbit.

Until now, Blue Origin had used its rockets only for suborbital space tourism.

“The thing we’re most nervous about is the booster landing,” Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who founded Blue Origin in 2000, told Reuters news agency in a pre-launch interview.

The development of New Glenn has spanned three Blue Origin CEOs and faced numerous delays as Elon Musk’s SpaceX grew into an industry juggernaut with its reusable Falcon 9, the world’s most active rocket.