Blue Origin's fully reusable rocket approaches landing in West Texas. (Credit: blueorigin.com)

Blue Origins, the private spaceflight company owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, launched — and safely landed — a rocket, the company announced in a .

A highly produced video of the expedition, also released Monday, shows the BE-3 rocket and crew capsule lifting off from a West Texas plain. The spacecraft, named New Shepard, shoots some 100.4 km (62 miles) into the air, when the manned capsule separates from the rocket. At this point, the video moves into a brief simulation, imagining what it might be like for human passengers, gazing back at our planet from the suborbital level.

Then, viewers are thrust back into reality, as the manned capsule lands with the help of parachutes and the rocket makes a controlled vertical landing. There's a gentle bump and then a stop against the Earth, historic for its safety.

Bezos used this opportunity to send out his first-ever tweet. Which prompted competitor Elon Musk to send out a contentious tweet in response.

Musk's SpaceX, Blue Origins and Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic have been locked in a modern-day space race, aiming to send commercial travelers to space. Bezos told CNN, though, that he doesn't see the other two entrepreneurs as the real competition.

"I think of our competition primarily as Earth's gravity," . "Space is a big place. There's room for all of us."

On Friday, SpaceX and the Boeing company announced a , a bid to ferry American astronauts to the International Space Station from U.S. soil. Blue Origin is also working with Boeing on U.S. government contracts, reported Tuesday.

As it currently stands, American astronauts hitch a ride of the Russian Soyuz capsule. SpaceX has launched ISS resupply rockets in the past, including one that , as part of NASA's partnerships with private industry. Virgin Galactic suffered a similar setback in its technology last year, which unlike the SpaceX explosion, resulted in the and injury to another.

As for the successful Blue Origin launch, it's not yet known when the technology could translate to the true end goal: commercial spaceflight. We’ll fly humans when we’re ready,” Bezos told . “I’m thinking it could be sometime in 2017.”

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