After years of delays, the billionaire’s Blue Origin space company launched its New Glenn rocket early Thursday.

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.

Blue Origin successfully launched the rocket after an attempt earlier in the week was scrubbed. The flight is a crucial test of the company’s ability to compete with Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

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.

During the flight, the rocket's first stage failed to land on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean, but its primary goal of successfully placing the satellite into Earth's orbit was achieved.

Blue Origin, the aerospace company owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has successfully launched the New Glenn, a heavy-lift rocket that could potentially compete with Elon Musk's SpaceX rockets, Azernews reports.

Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin launches its massive new rocket, called the New Glenn, into orbit the Earth on its first test flight. The space company attempted to land the rocket’s booster on a barrage in the Atlantic Ocean,

Jeff Bezos, who became one of the richest people ... The booster is now heading toward a floating platform, Jacklyn, in the Atlantic Ocean, where it will attempt to land. The best thing you ...

Bezos’ space company Blue Origin started at about the same time as Musk’s SpaceX but since then Musk’s firm has launched more than 400 of its Falcon 9 rockets into orbit and is testing out its giant Starship rocket which it hopes will send astronauts to the Moon and one day possibly on to Mars.

The mission, the culmination of a decade-long, multi-billion-dollar development journey, will include an attempt to land New Glenn’s first stage booster on a sea-fairing barge in the Atlantic Ocean 10 minutes after lift-off, while the rocket’s second stage continues toward orbit.

The company, started by the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, reset its countdown clock repeatedly over a period of just over two hours before eventually postponing the test flight to another day.