Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket exploded today during a hotfire test on its launch pad in Florida — dealing heavy damage to the pad, and dealing a heavy blow to Jeff Bezos’ space venture.
“All personnel are accounted for and safe,” Bezos said in a post to X. “It’s too early to know the root cause but we’re already working to find it. Very rough day, but we’ll rebuild whatever needs rebuilding and get back to flying. It’s worth it.”
The U.S. Space Force confirmed that there were no injuries or fatalities. “Range officials, in coordination with Blue Origin and appropriate partners, are currently evaluating available data to determine the exact cause of the anomaly,” it said in a Facebook post. In a follow-up post to X, the Space Force’s Space Launch Delta 45 cautioned that debris from the anomaly could wash ashore over the coming days or weeks.
The 322-foot-tall rocket, nicknamed “No, It’s Necessary” in a reference to the movie “Interstellar,” had been due to send 48 Amazon Leo satellites into orbit as soon as next week. The Federal Aviation Administration gave its go-ahead for launch last week after Blue Origin wrapped up an investigation of a launch failure that occurred in April.
In preparation for liftoff, the New Glenn rocket was brought out to Blue Origin’s pad at Space Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station for a static test firing of its booster engines. The satellites were not aboard the rocket for the test.
Video showed the rocket exploding in a huge fireball after the engines were lit up. “They just nuked the pad,” one observer could be heard saying in a video recorded by Spaceflight Now. Other views of the blast were captured by NASASpaceflight.com.
Space Launch Complex 36 is the only facility built to launch the heavy-lift New Glenn rocket, and the pad will need to be repaired before Blue Origin can return to flight. There’s certain to be an investigation of the incident conducted under the supervision of the FAA, the Space Force and other authorities.
Next week’s scheduled launch would have marked the first use of New Glenn to put satellites into orbit for the Amazon Leo broadband network. More than 300 Amazon Leo satellites are already in low Earth orbit, thanks to launches by SpaceX, Arianespace and United Launch Alliance — and today’s anomaly doesn’t affect the schedules for those companies. United Launch Alliance’s Atlas 5 rocket is due to launch 29 Amazon Leo satellites from Cape Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 41 in Cape Canaveral on Friday.
Blue Origin’s launch schedule, in contrast, appears likely to be put on hold for months. The company was expected to send its robotic Blue Moon Mark 1 lander to the moon as early as this fall with NASA payloads on board. And NASA has scheduled a potential test of a crew-capable Blue Moon Mark 2 lander in low Earth orbit next year for its Artemis 3 mission.
Earlier this week, NASA announced that it had selected Blue Origin and New Glenn to deliver two commercial lunar terrain vehicles to the moon by 2028 as part of its decade-long initiative to build a permanent moon base. Now all those plans are up in the air.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in a post to X that the space agency was made aware of today’s anomaly. “Spaceflight is unforgiving, and developing new heavy-lift launch capability is extraordinarily difficult,” he said. “We will work with our partners to support a thorough investigation of this anomaly, assess near-term mission impacts, and get back to launching rockets. We will provide information on any impacts to the Artemis and Moon Base programs as it becomes available.”
Blue Origin came in for some sympathy from Bezos’ billionaire rival, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who had to deal with a launch-pad explosion in 2016. “Sorry to see this, I hope you recover quickly,” Musk wrote on X.
Thanks to Spaceflight Now and NASASpaceflight.com for permission to use imagery of the explosion.
