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Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin on Thursday morning finally launched its massive New Glenn rocket into orbit, snagging a big win after years of delays.
The 322-foot rocket named after John Glenn, who made the first American orbital flight in 1962, achieved liftoff at 2:03 a.m. ET after a few minor delays, including one caused by a wayward boat. Within the next 15 minutes, New Glenn passed the Kármán line and reached orbit, officially achieving the main goal of its maiden voyage.
The second stage of the vehicle, NG-1, reached its final orbit after two successful burns of its engines, according to the company. However, the reusable first booster, failed to land on “Jacklyn,” a landing pad named after Bezos’ mother that was placed in the Atlantic Ocean. Bezos said earlier this month that the company was “most nervous” about the landing.
“I’m incredibly proud New Glenn achieved orbit on its first attempt,” Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp said in a statement. “We knew landing our booster, ‘So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance,’ on the first try was an ambitious goal.”
“We’ll learn a lot from today and try again at our next launch this spring,” Limp added.
New Glenn was also successful in delivering its payload, the Blue Ring Pathfinder, which Blue Origin said is receiving data.
The Pathfinder is being used to test the technology created for a transfer vehicle designed to deliver satellites to their planned orbits that can carry 3,000 kilograms of payload. The vehicle could become monumental for Blue Origin.
Blue Origin has deals to launch satellites with companies such as Amazon and AST SpaceMobile and plans to launch a space station called Orbital Reef.
“Today marks a new era for Blue Origin and for commercial space,” Jarett Jones, a Blue Origin executive overseeing the New Glenn project, said in a statement. “We’re focused on ramping our launch cadence and manufacturing rates.”
New Glenn’s first mission was years in the making.
The 24-year-old Blue Origin began making some of the vehicle’s parts as early as 2012, with an official announcement in 2016. The company had planned to launch New Glenn in late 2022 after a few delays. In late December, regulators finally granted Blue Origin a launch license.
The company took a much slower approach to development than its chief rival, Elon Musk’s SpaceX, putting an emphasis on getting it right before an official test. Blue Origin’s motto translates to “step by step, ferociously!” and its mascot is a tortoise. The company pushed back its NG-1 launch several times over the past week as it sought better conditions for the mission.
“We believe slow is smooth and smooth is fast,” Bezos said in 2016. “You have to do it step-by-step. But you do want to do it ferociously.”
SpaceX also plans to launch its own mega-rocket, the 400-foot-tall Starship, on Thursday after suffering its own delays. It had planned for its seventh test of Starship for last Friday before delaying the launch. In a post on his X social media platform, Musk congratulated Bezos on the successful launch.