Blue Origin, the rocket company Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos founded, notched one of the most substantial successes in its history on Thursday: sending a rocket to orbit.

Shrugging off bad weather, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin launched its powerful New Glenn rocket on its maiden flight early Thursday, lighting up a cloudy overnight sky as it climbed away from Cape Canaveral in a high-stakes bid to compete with Elon Musk's industry-leading SpaceX.

Founded 25 years ago by Bezos, Blue Origin has been launching paying passengers to the edge of space since 2021, including himself. The short hops from Texas use smaller rockets named after the first American in space, Alan Shepard. New Glenn, which honors John Glenn, is five times taller.

Blue Origin scrubbed the planned 29th launch of its New Shepard suborbital rocket today (Jan. 28) due to uncooperative weather and a vehicle issue.

After an extended delay brought on by unfavorable weather conditions and a vehicle issue that required troubleshooting, Blue Origin has scrubbed its Tuesday morning launch. This trip was intended to simulate the moon’s gravity and would have flown 30 payloads,

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin launches suborbital New Shepard rocket from Texas Blue Origin launches a suborbital New Shepard rocket from Texas without humans aboard, carrying 30 research payloads, including some for moon-related studies.