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.

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

Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin rocket is about to make a second launch attempt from Florida The reusable rocket had initially been due to set off earlier this week, but was postponed due to a "vehicle subsystem issue" The rocket, New Glenn, is named after John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth