Blue Origin also uses the New Glenn rocket for the first time

Blue Origin has successfully used one of its New Glenn rockets for the first time, marking a major step in the launch of a heavy-lift vehicle as Jeff Bezos’ space company looks to compete with Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

The company was successful Sunday in the third installation of New Glenn, and more one year later the first flight of a new rocket, which has been in development for more than ten years.

Making New Glenn reusable is important to its economy. SpaceX’s ability to relaunch Falcon 9 rockets is one of the main reasons it has come to dominate the global orbital market.

Although Blue Origin has already sent money to buy commercial space with New Glenn – Sunday was the second such mission – the company wants to use the rocket for NASA’s lunar missions, and help both with Amazon to build space satellites. Blue Origin is finalizing plans for its first robotic lunar mission to prepare for launch later this year.

The motivation that Blue Origin flew again on Sunday was the same one that the company used in the second New Glenn mission in November. During this mission, the New Glenn booster helped put two NASA spacecraft into space for a trip to Mars, before returning to the spacecraft in the ocean. On Sunday, Blue Origin returned the rocket to the spacecraft for the second time about 10 minutes after liftoff.

Sunday’s main task was to launch a space communications satellite for customer AST SpaceMobile. New Glenn’s upper section had carried the satellite to its final orbit at the time of publication, and TechCrunch will update this post as the mission continues.