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Jeff Bezos’s New Glenn Rocket Lifts Off on Maiden Flight

The New Glenn rocket from Blue Origin, the Amazon founder and billionaire Jeff Bezos’s space company, lifted off on its maiden flight on Thursday morning.

The goal of the flight is to put the carrier rocket into orbit around the Earth. In the future, the rocket should be able to carry multiple satellites per flight. The rocket’s booster should end up on a platform about 1,000 kilometres away in the Atlantic Ocean after launch so that it can be reused. “If that works, that would be the icing on the cake,” Bezos said earlier.

The launch was postponed several times this week, once due to weather conditions and once due to problems with the subsystem.

On Thursday morning, the rocket was finally successfully launched into space from Cape Canaveral in the US state of Florida. “New Glenn begins its very first ascent to the stars,” space company Blue Origin wrote on X.

“Whatever happens, we will learn from it, refine it and apply the lessons learned to our next launch,” Blue Origin said Thursday.

With the approximately 100-meter-high rocket, Bezos’ Blue Origin wants to compete with rival SpaceX of another American billionaire, Elon Musk. The latter has since congratulated Bezos. “Congratulations on reaching Earth orbit on the first attempt,” Musk posted on his X-platform.

New Glenn will launch part of the planned Amazon network, similar to Musk’s Starlink satellites. The rocket is named after John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth.

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