Rocket launch challenges Elon Musk’s space dominance

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s space business has blasted its first rocket into orbit in a bid to test the dominance of Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

The recent Glenn rocket launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 02:02 local period (07:02 GMT).

It firmly pits the globe’s two richest men against each other in a commercial space race, vying to fly bigger and more powerful rockets.

Both desire to populate the skies with more satellites, run private space stations, and provide transport for regular trips by people to the Moon.

“Congratulations on reaching orbit on the first attempt!” Musk wrote in a post to Bezos on X.

Dave Limp, CEO of Bezos’s space business Blue Origin, said he was “incredibly proud”.

“We’ll discover a lot from today and try again at our next launch this spring,” he added.

Bezos’s throng overcame technical barriers that caused delays earlier this week when ice formation halted a launch.

Blue Origin’s employees and crowds gathered near Cape Canaveral cheered as the 98 meters-high rocket hurtled into orbit.

But the business failed to land recent Glenn’s main rocket engine, or booster, onto a platform in the Atlantic Ocean.

It had hoped that the booster would be reusable for upcoming launches but after about 20 minutes of flight, the business confirmed it had lost the engine.

Bezos’s business Blue Origin has struggled to match the pace set by SpaceX. But this launch will be seen as a major step forward for the business.

The recent Glenn rocket was named after John Glenn, the first American astronaut to orbit Earth more than 60 years ago.

The rocket is more powerful than SpaceX’s most commonly used rocket, the Falcon 9. It can also carry more satellites, and Bezos wants to use it as part of his assignment Kuiper, which aims to deploy thousands of low-earth satellites to provide broadband services.

That assignment would compete directly with Musk’s Starlink service.

Jeff Bezos founded Blue Origin 25 years ago, claiming he wanted “millions of people working and living in space.”

For years the assignment has sent a smaller, reusable rocket called recent Shepard to the edge of Earth’s mood. It has carried passengers and payloads, including Bezos himself in 2021.

But Blue Origin has been dramatically outperformed by SpaceX, which launched its rockets 134 times last year.

And SpaceX’s recent production of rocket, called Starship, is more powerful still. The business hopes to launch it in its seventh test flight later today.

Some experts declare a successful recent Glenn rocket will make real competition between the two companies and could drive down the costs of space operations.

“What you are going to view are these two companies test each other to make even greater strides,” suggests Dr Simeon Barber at the Open University in the UK.

Governments have historically spent billions on building rockets and sending missions into space.

But US space agency NASA is increasingly moving away from relying only on community money and has issued huge contracts to private companies to provide rockets and other space services.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX has already received billions of dollars worth of space contracts.

His close connection with the next US president, Donald Trump, could strengthen his business further.