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.

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.

Elon Musk took to X to share GIFs from the movie "Step Brothers," comparing himself and fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos to the film's two main characters after Bezos's space company, Blue Origin, successfully launched its first rocket into orbit.

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).

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."

Blue Origin LLC’s new flagship rocket lifted off for the first time and successfully reached orbit in a crucial test of the Jeff Bezos-backed firm’s ability to challenge SpaceX’s ironclad grip on the launch market.

Plus: Blue Origin and SpaceX launch big rockets, how magnets could guide lasers to make better computers, how to best work with your IT department and more.

Several space stocks have shrugged off the explosion of SpaceX's Starship spacecraft during its seventh flight test SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has described the explosion of the company's Starship spacecraft during its seventh flight test Thursday as "barely a bump in the road,