The Amazon founder’s space company marked a major milestone Thursday with the first test flight of its New Glenn rocket.

Shrugging off bad weather, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin launched its powerful New Glenn rocket on its maiden flight early Thursday, lighting up a cloudy overnight sky as it climbed away from Cape Canaveral in a high-stakes bid to compete with Elon Musk's industry-leading SpaceX.

Blue Origin launched its massive new rocket on its first test flight Thursday, sending up a prototype satellite to orbit thousands of miles above Earth. Named after the first American to orbit Earth,