Elon Musk congratulates Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin on gaining orbit on first attempt

According to Fox Business, the key objective for the Blue Origin rocket was to gain orbit, which it did on the first try, early Thursday morning. Musk posted in response, "Congratulations on reaching orbit on the first attempt!" and tagged Bezos in the post.

Bezos, for his part, posted a photo of the rocket launch that has been seen over two million times on X, and thanked Musk for the congratulatory note.

Musk, who founded Blue Origin's competitor SpaceX, and Bezos, have both been on the cutting edge of space exploration with their private companies. When the New Glenn rocket was able to gain orbit on Thursday, Blue Origin posted, "New Glenn safely reached its intended orbit during today's NG-1 mission, accomplishing our primary objective. The second stage is in its final orbit following two successful burns of the BE-3U engines. The Blue Ring Pathfinder is receiving data and performing well."

"We lost the booster during descent. We knew landing the first stage on the first try was ambitious. We'll learn, refine, and apply that knowledge to our next launch in the spring. We're thrilled with today's outcome," the company added.

New Glenn already has contracts signed with the United States Space Force, Eutelsat, mu Space, SKY Perfect JSAT, and Telesat, according to Forbes. The project with the rocket is also poised to expand on Amazon’s Project Kuiper, an "initiative to increase global broadband access through a constellation of more than 3,000 satellites in low Earth orbit," the company states.