Blue Origin, the company promoted by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, successfully launched a New Glenn rocket carrying two NASA spacecraft bound for Mars last Thursday, and then landed correctly. This is an accomplishment previously achieved only by Elon Musk’s company SpaceX. Thus, the conflict between the two giants over the space business has entered a new phase. A space race with a distinct industrial and financial profile, in which two of the world’s richest people compete, with the support of major investment and technology groups.
The launch was delayed for several days due to weather conditions both on Earth and in space. In fact, the second postponement was due to NASA’s concerns about “increased solar activity” that could affect or damage the spacecraft. NASA said the twin spacecraft built by Rocket Lab will be used in a mission led by the University of Berkeley to study how a constant stream of particles from the Sun (known as the solar wind) traveling at millions of kilometers per hour gradually erodes large portions of Mars’ atmosphere.
On the rocket’s second flight, Blue Origin was able to recover propellant for reuse. Before Thursday, SpaceX was the only company to accomplish a similar maneuver using an orbital rocket. Elon Musk himself also congratulated Jeff Bezos and the Blue Origin team through a message on the social network X.
Blue Origin’s accomplishments come amid increasing competition between two private space companies owned by both heavyweights, just as NASA recently began bidding for moon missions.
New Glenn, named after astronaut John Glenn, who was the first American to orbit the Earth, is a powerful two-stage launch vehicle manufactured by Blue Origin. The rocket is designed to be reusable, and the first stage, the booster that provides the initial boost during liftoff, is protected for at least 25 flights, the company said.
of start Space is one of Jeff Bezos’ major bets, and Bezos has even said in the past that Blue Origin could one day be bigger than Amazon itself. Amazon’s market value is currently approximately $2.3 trillion, making it one of the world’s most capitalized companies after NVIDIA, Apple, Microsoft, and Alphabet.
So far, Blue Origin has been almost entirely funded by Bezos, who, according to some professional media outlets, spends at least $2 billion a year to keep the company afloat. Some analysts say: start The valuation is between 50,000 and 100,000. This number could increase 40 times over the next 10 years, reaching 4 billion, more than Amazon.
In any case, Blue Origin’s current numbers place it second behind SpaceX’s $400 billion. start OpenAI has completed various funding rounds with support from groups such as Alphabet and Fidelity. The company, run by Elon Musk, is a world leader in space launches. In fact, his reusable rockets are used in 85% of US launches, and not a week goes by that the tycoon doesn’t publicly highlight it on his social networks. At a recent Tesla shareholder meeting, Musk opened the door to SpaceX’s IPO after approving a controversial $1 billion payout if the company meets a series of goals. He also predicted that Tesla’s robot Optimus and its vehicles “will play a key role” in building future bases on the Moon and Mars. “It’s going to be a great next-generation Moon or Mars vehicle,” he told investors.
Alongside these moves, Amazon renamed its Kuiper business, which aims to compete with Musk’s Starlink in satellite communications, to Amazon Leo. The company already has 150 satellites in orbit and is preparing to accelerate its entry into commercial services that are not yet operational. The goal is to build a network of over 3,200 devices.
Additionally, Amazon Leo has customers such as JetBlue, L3Harris, DIRECTV Latin America, Sky Brasil, NBN Co., or the operators of Australia’s National Broadband Network. Amazon Leo is headquartered in Redmond, Washington, and conducts its principal research and development activities. In addition, the company has a satellite production facility in Kirkland, Wash., that can manufacture up to five satellites a day, and a satellite processing plant at Kennedy Space Center, Fla., to prepare its satellites before launch and integrate them with rockets from Blue Origin, SpaceX and United Launch Alliance.
In any case, it will not be easy as you will be competing with companies that are already in a good position. Amazon Leo will compete with Starlink, a SpaceX subsidiary that already has about 9,000 satellites in orbit and serves more than 6 million customers worldwide. Tesla’s founder is making a multi-million dollar bet to acquire spectrum for mobile phones in the United States. To this end, SpaceX recently agreed to acquire unallocated AWS-3 licenses from EchoStar for $2.6 billion, expanding on a deal the two companies signed in September that valued the entire deal at $17 billion.
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