Florida’s sky briefly lit up during the night as one of a handful of big new American-made rockets took flight. It was the first time a new space company achieved orbit on the first launch attempt.

The company, started by the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, reset its countdown clock repeatedly over a period of just over two hours before eventually postponing the test flight to another day.

This weekly newsletter on rockets provides definitive coverage of the global launch industry. The big news this week is the New Glenn and Starship missions.