Jeff Bezos earns FAA license for first rocket launch

 Blue Origin, the American space technology company founded by Jeff Bezos, earned a license from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) — a US government agency within the Department of Transportation that regulates civil aviation in the United States and surrounding international waters — to launch its first rocket, New Glenn.

Blue Origin will launch its new rocket ‘New Glenn

The US Federal Aviation Administration announced yesterday that it granted Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin a license to launch the New Glenn rocket.

Notably, Blue Origin was selected by the US Department of Defense, alongside Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Boeing-Lockheed’s United Launch Alliance, to compete for national security space missions in a program valued at approximately $5.6 billion.

The FAA’s five-year license obtained by Blue Origin will allow the company to conduct orbital missions from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, with the reusable first stage of its New Glenn rocket landing on a floating platform in the Atlantic Ocean, according to a statement from the Federal Aviation Administration.

Blue Origin stated that the first launch of the New Glenn rocket will be a preliminary mission to obtain certification from the US Space Force before the company can begin launching national security satellites.

Additionally, the New Glenn rocket will launch technologies related to the Blue Ring program, a project designed to provide maneuverable spacecraft for the US Department of Defense.