The Amazon founder’s space company marked a major milestone Thursday with the first test flight of its New Glenn rocket.

Hours after Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin nailed its first-ever orbital mission, SpaceX seized back the spotlight on Thursday as its latest test of Starship, its gargantuan next-generation megarocket, ended with the upper stage dramatically disintegrating over the Atlantic.

After Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin nailed its first-ever orbital flight, Elon Musk's SpaceX is seizing back the spotlight on Thursday with the latest launch of Starship, the gargantuan next-generation rocket that could one day ferry humans to Mars.

The uncrewed New Glenn rocket took off at 2:03 a.m. EST from Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Blue Origin said.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin is set for an inaugural launch of its giant New Glenn rocket on Sunday, a long-awaited first leap to Earth orbit that sets up one of the biggest challenges yet to industry dominance enjoyed by Elon Musk's SpaceX.

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

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