Blue Origin New Glenn Rocket: Jeff Bezos' Space Company Has Its First Customer

One small step for mankind, one giant leap for Jeff Bezos. The Amazon creator’s space project, Blue Origin, just got its first customer since its founding in 2000.

Bezos announced Tuesday during his keynote talk at the Satellite Show in Washington, D.C., that his satellite company, Blue Origin, will send a Eutelsat Communications satellite into space on its New Glenn rocket by 2022. Rodolphe Belmer, the CEO of Eutelsat Communications, joined Bezos on stage Tuesday, surprising the audience with the announcement. This partnership is the first time Blue Origin will get funding from somewhere other than Bezos.

Eutelsat is a French satellite provider that plans to send up a geostationary satellite, a satellite designed to stay in orbit 22,300 miles above the Earth’s equator.

The New Glenn rocket that will be taking up the satellite is designed to take off and land vertically, so it can be reused making it a more attractive option than rockets that can only be used once. This lowers the price of launches, Bezos said according to Satellite Today. He noted that once such reusability is reached, real innovation will begin in the industry because researchers will be able to take larger technological risks.

This announcement comes a week after Elon Musk announced his space project, SpaceX will be sending two private citizens to space in 2018.