A Blue Origin New Glenn rocket skilled an anomaly during a ground test often called a hotfire Thursday, the corporate shared on X.
Video captured from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida Thursday night seems to indicate a rocket exploding on its launchpad.
Blue Origin rocket explodes during ground test
“All personnel are accounted for and safe,” Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin’s founder, stated in a separate X post. “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 firm introduced New Glenn’s plans to return to flight earlier this week after a failure during the rocket’s third flight on April 19 prompted a Federal Aviation Administration investigation. During the April mission, the rocket’s first stage booster landed efficiently on a seafaring barge, however the higher portion, or second stage, of the rocket didn’t handle to ship its payload — AST SpaceCell’s BlueChook 7 satellite tv for pc — to a secure orbit.
New Glenn’s fourth mission was meant to hold 48 satellites to affix Amazon Leo’s broadband constellation.
“The FAA is aware that the Blue Origin New Glenn vehicle experienced an anomaly during a static fire test on the pad in Cape Canaveral, Florida around 9 p.m. local time on May 28,” the company stated in a press release to NCS. “This test was not within the scope of FAA licensed activities. There was no impact to air traffic. Please contact Blue Origin for more information.”
Blue Origin didn’t instantly reply to a request for additional remark.
“NASA is aware of the anomaly that occurred tonight at Launch Complex 36 involving Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station,” NASA chief Jared Isaacman stated on X Thursday. “Spaceflight is unforgiving, and developing new heavy-lift launch capability is extraordinarily difficult. 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.”
Range officers are coordinating with Blue Origin and its companions to find out the precise reason for the anomaly, in keeping with a press release launched by the US Space Force.
“The Eastern Range serves as a Department of Defense test and training range supporting critical development, testing, evaluation, and launch activities that advance national security and space capabilities,” in keeping with the assertion. “These operations often involve developmental systems and emerging technologies, and the nature of such testing carries inherent risk, including the potential for anomalies.”
New Glenn’s highs and lows
The debut flight of New Glenn — Blue Origin’s first orbital rocket — on January 16, 2025, was deemed a hit. But the corporate didn’t attain its bonus aim of guiding the car’s first-stage booster again to a secure touchdown on a seafaring platform after takeoff. The firm later attributed the failed restoration try to engines that didn’t correctly reignite.
That touchdown maneuver, designed to permit Blue Origin to refurbish and reuse rocket boosters — very similar to SpaceX does with its Falcon rockets — is meant to save cash and drive down the price of launches. If New Glenn finds constant success with reusability on this manner, it may probably chip away at SpaceX’s dominance within the trade.
Blue Origin spent 10 months tweaking the car to ensure a profitable booster touchdown, and New Glenn’s second launch in November 2025 seemingly went off with out a hitch. The booster landed safely, and the flight additionally despatched an vital payload, a landmark NASA mission referred to as Escapade, off on its winding journey to Mars.
The firm celebrated its booster touchdown after New Glenn’s third flight in April however Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp acknowledged in a post on X that shedding AST SpaceCell’s satellite tv for pc was lower than very best.
“While we are pleased with the nominal booster recovery, we clearly didn’t deliver the mission our customer wanted, and our team expects,” Limp posted on the time. “Early data suggest that on our second GS2 burn, one of the BE-3U engines didn’t produce sufficient thrust to reach our target orbit.”
Blue Origin introduced in January it was pausing flights of its space tourism rocket, often called New Shepard, for 2 years to concentrate on growing human lunar landers. New Shepard had been launching 10-minute flights carrying celebrities, particular friends and rich thrill seekers to the sting of area since 2021.
Both Bezos’s firm and SpaceX maintain NASA contracts to develop automobiles able to ferrying astronauts from area to the moon’s floor for the Artemis program. SpaceX plans to make use of its Starship megarocket — a gargantuan rocket system that Musk initially billed for Mars journey — for the duty, and anticipated to tackle the earliest human touchdown makes an attempt in NASA’s plans. However, Starship continues to be within the early phases of improvement, and over the previous couple of years prototypes have exploded during temporary, suborbital test flights.
Meanwhile, Blue Origin is constructing a lunar lander that appears extra like a conventional Apollo-style car. But the corporate has not but launched a test flight.
Transportation secretary Sean Duffy issued warnings to the dueling corporations in October, when he was additionally serving as NASA’s performing administrator: He indicated that NASA might use Blue Origin’s lander to return people to the moon as quickly as 2028 if SpaceX’s lander is just too far delayed.
“If SpaceX is behind, but Blue Origin can do it before them, good on Blue Origin,” Duffy advised CNBC’s “Squawk Box” in October. “But … we’re not going to wait for one company. We’re going to push this forward and win the second space race against the Chinese.”
Given that oversight officers had been skeptical that both lander may very well be prepared for a lunar landing in 2028, it additionally stays to be seen whether or not both car may very well be prepared to finish a crewed test mission in low-Earth orbit by subsequent 12 months as NASA’s administrator, Isaacman, hopes.
It is unclear how Thursday night time’s anomaly will influence Blue Origin’s lunar ambitions going ahead.
“We will provide information on any impacts to the Artemis and Moon Base programs as it becomes available,” Isaacman stated in his submit on X Thursday night.
NCS’s Jackie Wattles and Amanda Jackson contributed to this report.