Jeff Bezos, the second richest man in the world, successfully blasted off a 320-foot-tall rocket ship made by his Blue Origin company from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in the early hours of the morning. It made the company the first to successfully reach orbit on its first launch of an orbital-class rocket.

While Jeff Bezos has spent $14 billion to achieve his first space launch, his billionaire rival has built a thriving business, mostly with other people’s money.

Blue Origin has launched its New Shepard rocket—a reusable sub-orbital rocket used for space tourism—27 times. It's named after Alan Shepard, the first American in space. Bezos flew in New Shepard on July 20, 2021, crossing the Kármán line, the dividing line between Earth’s atmosphere and outer space.

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin on Monday called off its inaugural launch of its New Glenn rocket after a number of last-minute issues – hurting the space firm in its race to compete with Elon Musk’s dominant SpaceX. The 320-foot rocket was scheduled to blast off from Cape Canaveral in Florida at 1 a.m. ET before the launch was aborted.

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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.

"My own opinion is that we should do both – we need to go to the moon and we should go to Mars," Bezos said, when asked if he was concerned about changes to NASA's moon program. Jeff Bezos speaks about his flight on Blue Origin’s New Shepard into space ...

Jeff Bezos has taken a major leap forward in his battle with Elon Musk to conquer space after launching his heavy New Glenn rocket into orbit for the first time...

Blue Origin is going slower than SpaceX, but it also nailed a massive rocket launch on the first try. Jeff Bezos is back in the space race.

Blue Origin scored a major win with its New Glenn rocket launch, but SpaceX still leads the space industry with a Falcon fleet and upcoming Starship.

SpaceX CEO Musk has described the explosion of the company's Starship spacecraft during its seventh flight test Thursday as "barely a bump in the road," underlining the momentum behind the commercial space giant.