Engaging articles, breathtaking images and expert knowledge

Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin launched its New Glenn rocket into orbit early Thursday, in a critical milestone that comes some 25 years after the billionaire founded the company with the goal of reducing the cost of access to space.

Privately owned Blue Origin has achieved its goal a decade in the making of becoming an orbital launch player, even as it failed to recover its first-stage booster in the ambitious inaugural flight of its New Glenn rocket.