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 launched its New Glenn rocket into orbit on Thursday at 1:03 a.m. CST from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

KEY TAKEAWAYS Blue Origin, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' space company, launched its large rocket for the first time early Thursday.After several postponed launches, the 320-foot-tall New Glenn rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 2:03 a.

After abruptly calling off its first launch attempt in the early hours of Monday morning, Blue Origin notched a historic success with its first orbital rocket.

The billionaire’s rocket is ready for its first launch. It could give satellite operators and the DoD a long-desired option to SpaceX—at a cheaper price, Forbes reveals.

After numerous delays and a last-minute scrub on Monday, Blue Origin finally launched the inaugural flight of its massive New Glenn rocket.

The 320-foot New Glenn rocket was initially scheduled to launch early Monday with a prototype satellite aboard.

After years of development, Blue Origin is finally ready to conduct the maiden test flight of the company’s New Glenn rocket. The flight is currently scheduled for a three-hour launch window on Friday, Jan. 10, starting at 1 am EST. The company plans to begin live streaming the event on BlueOrigin.com about an hour before the launch.

If New Glenn can continue to demonstrate its capabilities and (more crucially) its reliability, it has the potential to take some business that SpaceX would otherwise struggle to accommodate.

Mr. Bezos recently said he expected Blue Origin would eventually make more money than Amazon. Like SpaceX, the company is envisioning New Glenn not as a rocket just to launch satellites for customers.

The New Glenn makes it safely into orbit for the inaugural test flight of a rocket that could rival those in Elon Musk's SpaceX fleet.