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.

The New Glenn rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a test flight that will take it high above Earth before returning to the planet's atmosphere for a landing

SpaceX's billionaire boss Elon Musk on Thursday congratulated Jeff Bezos, founder of rival space company Blue Origin, after the firm launched its New Glenn rocket into orbit for the first time.

Blue Origin, the rocket company founded by Jeff Bezos in 2000, waved off an attempt to launch its first orbital rocket. Blue Origin said engineers worked to troubleshoot an issue with the rocket but could not resolve the problem in time.

A BATTLE of billionaires will escalate this week as Jeff Bezos prepares for a daring rocket launch to rival Elon Musk’s SpaceX. The Amazon founder’s space company Blue Origin is set to

The successful flight to orbit of the Amazon founder’s powerful rocket suggests it could grow into a credible competitor with Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

SpaceX launched Starship on Thursday for a seventh test flight, after weather concerns pushed back an experiment that will feature the spacecraft’s first payload deployment test, and while it successfully caught the Super Heavy Booster, Starship lost connection and “experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly.”

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

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos's space company has blasted its first rocket into orbit in a bid to challenge the dominance of Elon Musk's SpaceX. The New Glenn rocket launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 02:02 local time (07:02 GMT).

Elon Musk's SpaceX's Starship test flight ended in failure as the spacecraft exploded and broke apart, following a suspected fuel leak in the engine firewall.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk took to X on Thursday night to explain what his company believes may have caused part of the Starship rocket to experience a "rapid unscheduled disassembly."