Blue Origin successfully launches its SpaceX rival

The billionaire space race entered a new phase today when Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin successfully launched its 320-foot-tall New Glenn rocket this morning from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

At 2:03 AM ET this morning, New Glenn’s seven reusable BE-4 engines fired to propel the NG-1 rocket into space, with the second stage and payload reaching orbit to reach the primary objective of the Blue Origin mission.

In parallel, the first stage booster – nicknamed “So You’re Telling Me There’s A Chance” – descended autonomously to its landing platform located several hundred kilometers in the Atlantic. As it approached Jacklyn’s boat, the booster lost contact with the controller and stopped sending data. Blue Origin confirmed that the booster was lost during landing.

However, Blue Origin’s goal for today’s uncrewed launch was to get New Glenn into orbit. Anything beyond that would be a bonus – like activating a prototype Blue Ring Pathfinder vehicle or landing the reusable booster. “Anyway, we’ll learn a lot,” said Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp ahead of today’s launch.

The launch comes after nearly a decade of development and puts Elon Musk’s SpaceX on notice. New Glenn has about the same carrying capacity as SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, and is intended to carry cargo into space on the reusable launch pad. This includes satellites for Blue Origin’s rival to Starlink’s high-speed, low-latency Internet service. The first of these 3,236 Kuiper project The satellites are expected to launch into low Earth orbit soon, aboard SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket before New Glenn can take on the heavy payload.