First New Glenn rocket reaches orbit

Blue Origin launched its towering New Glenn rocket for the first time on Thursday, in a major milestone for Jeff Bezos’ space company.

New Glenn thundered off the launch pad in the early hours of the morning in Florida, reached space and ultimately made it into orbit as part of a long-awaited debut mission. Blue Origin also attempted to land the rocket’s booster on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean, but the booster was lost during re-entry through the atmosphere.

The launch is a defining moment for Blue Origin.

Although it was founded 25 years ago, Bezos’ company had yet to begin flying into orbit – with its much smaller New Shepard rocket flying only people and research on short excursions to the edge of space. New Glenn’s flight marks Blue Origin’s entry into a market dominated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX and is critical to unleashing the centi-billionaire founder’s larger ambitions.

There was no one on board the New Glenn flight, which carried a single small test payload into space. The rocket was named to honor the late John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth.

Originally, the company aimed for the daring feat of flying NASA’s “ESCAPADE” mission to Mars on New Glenn’s debut. But with a dwindling launch window, the agency delayed ESCAPADE to a later launch. Blue Origin also has orders from Amazon‘s Project Kuiper for at least 12 launches of its Internet satellites, as well as plans to launch the Blue Moon lunar and Orbital Reef space stations. Bezos founded Amazon six years before creating Blue Origin.

Headquartered in the Seattle suburb of Kent, Washington, Blue Origin has more than 10,000 employees there and in half a dozen other major locations around the country, including industrial strongholds in Texas, Florida and Alabama. Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp previously told CNBC that Blue Origin has been “in kind of an R&D phase for a long time,” an aspect of the company’s culture he’s trying to change.

Blue plans to scale the cadence of New Glenn missions quickly and wants to perform as many as 10 New Glenn launches this year. The rocket, originally targeted for a 2020 debut, faced years of delays.

Minutes after launch, the rocket’s booster separated and returned through the atmosphere. The booster – nicknamed “So you’re telling me there’s a chance” – attempted to land on the company’s barge Jacklyn about 600 miles offshore in the Atlantic Ocean, but fell short. Blue Origin’s webcast last showed the booster at an altitude of about 84,000 feet.

While New Glenn did not put any satellites into orbit on the flight, it did carry a small demonstration version of the company’s “Blue Ring” spacecraft. Known in the industry as an orbital transfer vehicle (OTV) or space tug, the Blue Ring is designed to host satellites and spacecraft that deliver them from the rocket to their intended targets.

As is typical with an orbital rocket’s debut, New Glenn’s launch had some bumps along the way, with several days of delays due to technical problems with the rocket and weather.

So far in the industry’s table stakes for orbital missions, Blue Origin has not entered the serious rocket game, as the US launch market remains dominated by SpaceX, followed by RocketLabUnited Launch Alliance and Firefly Aerospace.

Jeff, welcome to the club.