CAPE CANAVERAL—Privately owned Blue Origin plans to try again on Jan. 16 to launch its first orbital rocket on a 6-hr. demonstration mission that includes an attempt to return and land the first-stage booster on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean.

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

SpaceX dominates this week’s launch manifest with three Falcon 9 missions and the seventh flight of its Starship rocket. The three Falcon 9 missions will see the launches of a batch of Starlink satellites, a Transporter rideshare mission, and two Moon landers.

SpaceX launched its Starship mega-rocket for the seventh time. It achieve an epic booster catch but the ship was lost.

Jeff Bezos' humongous reusable rocket, New Glenn, made its way to orbit in its first test flight earlier today.

Jeff Bezos’s space company is about to launch New Glenn, a reusable rocket intended to rival SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, for the first time

Once in orbit, the upper stage released the Blue Ring Pathfinder: a small prototype spacecraft designed to host and transport satellites between orbits, refuel visiting spacecraft, and perform computing and communications from space. According to Blue Origin, Blue Ring is “receiving data and performing well.”

Founded 25 years ago by Bezos, Blue Origin has been launching paying passengers to the edge of space since 2021, including himself. The short hops from Texas use smaller rockets named after the first American in space, Alan Shepard. New Glenn, which honors John Glenn, is five times taller.