Florida’s sky briefly lit up during the night as one of a handful of big new American-made rockets took flight. It was the first time a new space company achieved orbit on the first launch attempt.

Blue Origin, the rocket company Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos founded, notched one of the most substantial successes in its history on Thursday: sending a rocket to orbit.

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.