Jeff Bezos, the second richest man in the world, successfully blasted off a 320-foot-tall rocket ship made by his Blue Origin company from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in the early hours of the morning.

Gregg Newton/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images On Thursday morning, at a time when most people in the United States were sleeping, Jeff Bezos’ space company sent its first rocket into orbit.

The Jeff Bezos-owned Blue Origin sent its massive new rocket into space Thursday — and carried a prototype satellite into orbit thousands of miles above the Earth’s surface. The seven-engine ...