Blue Origin's New Glenn finally roared into orbit in the early hours of Thursday, with SpaceX's Starship rocket set to launch hours later.

The New Glenn makes it safely into orbit for the inaugural test flight of a rocket that could rival those in Elon Musk's SpaceX fleet.

After more than a decade of development, hype and pent-up demand, Jeff Bezos’ aerospace venture Blue Origin will at long last attempt to put a rocket into orbit. New Glenn, originally intended to

Tesla CEO and Amazon founder vie for dominance of satellite launch market and could influence Nasa plans to return to Moon

Blue Origin, SpaceX attempted important launch missions on Thursday and witnessed their respective founders develop a cordial relationship.

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.

The scheduled Sunday launch could mark a new phase in competition in the commercial space market, and pave the way for the deployment of Amazon's Kuiper satellite network.

High-profile tech billionaires, including Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk will sit front and center at President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration.

Blue Origin scored a major win with its New Glenn rocket launch, but SpaceX still leads the space industry with a Falcon fleet and upcoming Starship.

Jeff Bezos, the second richest man in the world, successfully blasted off a 320-foot-tall rocket ship made by his Blue Origin company from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in the early hours of the morning. It made the company the first to successfully reach orbit on its first launch of an orbital-class rocket.

Florida’s sky briefly lit up during the night as one of a handful of big new American-made rockets took flight. It was the first time a new space company achieved orbit on the first launch attempt.