Blue Origin, the rocket company founded by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos nearly 25 years ago, reached a historic milestone on January 16, 2025, with its first successful orbital launch.
The New Glenn rocket, the company’s most powerful vehicle to date, lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida just after 2 a.m. ET. On board was the Blue Ring Pathfinder, a demonstration payload designed in partnership with the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), which was safely carried into orbit.
“We did it!” Blue Origin’s CEO Dave Limp said via X about reaching orbit. “On to spring and trying again on the landing.”
Blue Origin expects Blue Ring vehicles will be capable of carrying large satellites, with a maximum weight of up to 6,600 pounds (3,000 kilograms).
“Blue Ring addresses two of the most difficult challenges in spaceflight today: Growing space infrastructure and the need for increased mobility in space,” according to Blue Origin. “The spacecraft’s ability to maneuver to multiple orbits and locations, deploy and host payloads, and perform onboard computing and communications will enable groundbreaking missions for a variety of customers.”
Blue Origin’s long-awaited flight
Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket, a towering 320-foot, two-stage vehicle named in honor of John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, made its much-anticipated debut flight early Thursday morning. The rocket carried a suite of cutting-edge technologies designed for Blue Origin’s Blue Ring spacecraft.
New Glenn’s first mission, NG-1, marks a defining moment for Blue Origin, which has long aimed to compete with industry giants like SpaceX. The successful test represents a critical step forward in the company’s ambition to expand its reach in the space industry and establish a heavy-lift capability to support a wide array of space missions.
Founded 25 years ago by Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin had yet to reach orbit with its smaller New Shepard rocket, primarily used for brief suborbital flights carrying people and research to the edge of space. New Glenn’s successful launch signifies the company’s entry into a highly competitive orbital market, long dominated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX. This flight is a critical step toward realizing Bezos’ larger ambitions for Blue Origin in the space industry.
Blue Origin misses booster landing
Though New Glenn is designed to be partially reusable, Blue Origin’s attempt to land the booster stage on a seafaring platform failed. As the booster descended toward its landing site in the Atlantic Ocean, three engines were reignited to slow its descent. However, the vehicle ultimately missed its target.
This attempted landing was a key component of Blue Origin’s long-term strategy to reduce launch costs by reusing rocket stages — a model successfully employed by Elon Musk’s SpaceX for the past decade.
The first-stage booster, dubbed “So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance,” was meant to autonomously return to the Jacklyn barge, positioned several hundred miles off the coast. However, it lost communication just as it neared the platform, and Blue Origin confirmed that the booster was lost during the landing attempt. The company plans to make another attempt later this year, likely in the spring.
The key objective today was to reach orbit safely. Anything beyond that would have been “icing on the cake,” Bezos said in a brief interview before the mission. “It’s probably a little crazy to attempt to land the booster on the first flight. But, you know what, if we have failure today, at any point in the mission, we’ll pick ourselves up and do it again.”
Elon Musk, in a social media post shortly after the launch, congratulated Bezos for “reaching orbit on the first attempt.”
Despite the landing failure, the mission’s primary objective — reaching orbit — was successfully achieved, marking a significant step forward for Blue Origin. After nearly a decade of development, the company has a competitive launch vehicle capable of carrying a payload similar to SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy. New Glenn is designed to transport a variety of cargo into space, including satellites for Project Kuiper, Amazon’s ambitious initiative to provide high-speed internet to underserved areas, directly competing with SpaceX’s Starlink network.
“I’m incredibly proud New Glenn achieved orbit on its first attempt,” said Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp. “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.”