At 2:03 a.m. local time on January 16th, the large orbital rocket "New Glenn" of Blue Origin, a commercial airline owned by Amazon founder Bezos, launched into space for the first time.

New Glenn roars off from its launch pad in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The mission, expected to last several hours, is intended to put the company's Blue Ring Pathfinder test satellite into orbit and land New Glenn's lower half, called a booster, on a driverless ship in the Atlantic Ocean.

"New Glenn" is about 98 meters high, about 7 meters in diameter, has a take-off mass of 1,500 tons, and a take-off thrust-to-weight ratio of only 1.16. It uses a reusable first stage booster and is planned to return to Earth after launch and land on the recovery ship "Jacklyn" named after Bezos' mother in the Atlantic Ocean.

Blue Origin was founded by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in 2000 and is primarily known for space tourism. The "New Shepard" small rocket has been successfully developed, mainly used for space tourism. It can take tourists to the "Karman Line" 100 kilometers above the ground for short space tours.

"New Glenn" has been in development for about a decade. This is the first flight test of Blue Origin’s first orbital-class launch vehicle. The Blue Ring Pathfinder payload was successfully delivered into the intended orbit, and the launch mission was successful, but the booster recovery failed.

New Glenn almost became the second reusable rocket in the world, but it is still the launch vehicle with the largest diameter in service besides Starship and SLS.