Blue Origin’s New Glenn mega-rocket exploded during a test on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida. to live broadcasts From NASASpaceFlight.com and Now SpaceFlight. Blue Origin later confirmed the explosion.
Jeff Bezos’ space company, Amazon Leo, was conducting a static fire test ahead of its fourth launch, expected in the coming weeks, of a new rocket that will carry Internet satellites into space. That means the rocket was fully fueled, contributing to one of the biggest rocket explosions in US history and the worst failure in Blue Origin’s existence.
Blue origin he said “(a) all personnel are accounted for” and Bezos in X’s post on Thursday evening he wrote they were “safe”. The company did not say what went wrong, saying only that an “anomaly” had occurred.
“It is too early to know the root cause, but we are already working to find it. It is a very difficult day, but we will rebuild everything that needs to be rebuilt and get back to flying. It will be worth it,” – Bezos he wrote.
NASA administrator Jared Isaacman said about it post The agency said Thursday it will “work with our partners to support a comprehensive investigation of this anomaly, assess near-term mission impacts, and return to missile launches.”
In a statement, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) told TechCrunch that it was aware of the explosion and that there was “no impact on air traffic.” NASA and the Space Force did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The explosion will likely put the New Glenn rocket program on hold for a long time while Blue Origin fixes what went wrong. Blue Origin had planned to attempt as many as 12 launches of New Glenn this year after developing it for nearly a decade to compete with Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
The company should also help boost NASA’s Artemis missions to the moon, the agency said Blue Origin expects. role on that program earlier this week. Isaacman said Thursday that NASA “will have any impact on the Artemis and lunar base programs as they become available.”
Blue Origin aims to launch national security missions for the Pentagon as well.
“Most unfortunate. Rockets are hard” Elon Musk he wrote On X in a short time after the explosion. “I hope you get well soon.”
The explosion comes just weeks after Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket flew for the third time. This mission suffered its failure in the upper stage of New Glenn AST SpaceMobile failed to launch the satellite into orbitcausing the mission to be completely lost. Last week, the FAA cleared New Glenn to fly again after Blue Origin completed an investigation into the cause of the failure.
Very new, late rocket
Blue Origin spent years developing New Glenn while using the New Shepard program to test smaller-scale suborbital rockets. While New Shepard has delivered a fairly regular cadence of rich people and celebrities (along with some scientific missions) to the edge of space, Blue Origin has been constantly working in the background to develop a rocket capable of launching real commercial payloads, such as large satellites, into orbit.
It took a long time — longer than Blue Origin expected — but the company finally reached the top in January 2025. Flew with New Glenn for the first time.
The New Glenn looked like a fairly successful rocket right off the bat. It reached orbit on its first flight, though the booster stage exploded before Blue Origin could attempt to land it on the drone ship in the ocean.
Blue Origin was even more successful with the second flight of New Glenn in November 2025. Company during this mission Sent twin spacecraft to Mars For NASA. Blue Origin also landed the first booster stage during New Glenn’s second mission.
This allowed the company to re-fly the booster on New Glenn’s third mission, demonstrating its ability not only to recover the first stage, but also to recover it for reuse – a critical step in reducing the overall cost of the launch business.
The reusable rocket booster had no problem flying again and even landed a second time on one of Blue Origin’s drone ships during New Glenn’s flight. A third mission in April 2026. But the company experienced a cryogenic failure in the upper stage during the third mission, which caused the satellite to be lost.
This upcoming fourth mission was to be the first of 24 launches for which Amazon has a contract with Blue Origin. Amazon is currently building a rival to SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet network, which it calls Leo. Wednesday, Amazon it sounded The ability to rely on Blue Origin to build the network made New Glenn a “reusable, heavy-lift rocket.”
Amazon confirmed to TechCrunch on Thursday that there are no Leo satellites for this test.
On Thursday, Congressman Mike Haridopolos (R-FL), who represents Cape Canaveral’s district, he wrote At X, he spoke with NASA administrator Jared Isaacman about the explosion.
“I am grateful that there were no reported injuries and thank the first responders, engineers and launch crews who acted quickly. I am praying for Florida’s Space Coast and everyone involved,” he said.
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