Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket explodes in massive fireball, jeopardizing NASA’s lunar missions

The New Glenn rocket’s final flight was intended to prepare Blue Origin for a series of NASA-funded lunar voyages. Instead, it ended before it started

By Lee Billings edited by Claire Cameron

New Glenn, a giant rocket built and operated by Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin aerospace company, exploded in a massive fireball on Thursday at its launch pad in Florida. The disaster risks derailing the company’s planned launch missions, supported by NASA. lunar rovers and participate in the activities of the space agency Artemis III And Artemis IV crewed flights aimed at putting astronauts returning to the moon.

“All staff are identified and safe,” Bezos wrote. in an article on after the explosion. “It’s too early to know the root cause, but we are already working to find it. Very difficult day, but we will rebuild everything that needs rebuilding and get flying again. It will be worth it.”

In a separate post onBlue Origin said: “We encountered an anomaly during today’s Hotfire test. All personnel have been accounted for. We will provide updates as we learn more.” The company also warned that debris from the explosion could wash up on shore in the coming days and advised the public not to touch it and report anything they find.

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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk responded to the outburst with his own post. He wished Blue Origin a speedy recovery after the accident, which destroyed the rocket and severely damaged the New Glenn launch pad.

Through SpaceX and Blue Origin, Musk and Bezos are fighting for off-world economic dominance, each continuing their quest for global economic domination. projects to surround the Earth with several thousand communications satellites and orbital artificial intelligence data centers. But the most visible arena for this rivalry is the moon; Both SpaceX and Blue Origin are on deck to provide critical support to NASA’s Artemis program bring astronauts back to the lunar surface and build a lunar base.

The explosion has disastrous consequences for Blue Origin’s lunar prospects: the destroyed launch pad is the company’s only facility for sending New Glenn into space. And it will likely require months of extensive repairs, delaying and complicating Blue Origin’s contributions to NASA’s lunar ambitions. The space agency plans to land astronauts on the lunar surface by 2028 via the Artemis IV mission and considers itself in a race with Chinawhich aims to send astronauts to the Moon by 2030.

Before Thursday’s explosion, the rocket was scheduled to launch a batch of 48 satellites for another Bezos project: Amazon’s Leo constellation, which is an emerging competitor to SpaceX’s Starlink Internet network. The satellites were not on board the rocket when it exploded.

The explosion occurred around 9 p.m. EDT during a routine pre-flight “static fire” test of New Glenn’s seven first-stage engines, with the 322-foot-tall rocket attached to its launch pad at Launch Complex 36 of the Cape Canaveral space station. Video of the incident shows the engines apparently igniting, followed by flames shooting from outside the rocket. Then comes the eruption of a giant, brilliant fireball that destroys the rocket and its launch pad.

U.S. Space Force Eastern Range, which coordinates all launches from Florida, said in a statement that “Eastern Range remains fully mission capable and continues to support operations at all other launch complexes.”

NASA “will work with our partners to support a thorough investigation of this anomaly, assess near-term mission impacts, and resume rocket launches,” agency Administrator Jared Isaacman said. in an X post. “We will provide information on any impact on the Artemis and Moon Base programs as it becomes available.”

Blue Origin and SpaceX are each develop a human landing system (HLS) for future Artemis missions. Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mark 2 and SpaceX’s Starship HLS are both critical components of the space agency’s program. Artemis III assignmentplanned for next year. Placed in low Earth orbit via their company’s respective rockets, the two HLS spacecraft would be targets for Artemis III astronauts arriving separately in an Orion crew capsule, who would attempt docking and other maneuvers.

Given the catastrophic destruction of its rocket and its unique New Glenn launch pad, the likelihood that Blue Origin is ready for liftoff Artemis III now seems dangerously low. Meanwhile, SpaceX continues development of its fully reusable Starship vehicle, with its latest flight – the 12th in the program and the first for the Starship “V3” design – being largely successful, setting up a 13th test flight that will send the giant rocket into Earth orbit. But Starship has yet to demonstrate several unproven capabilities that are crucial to NASA’s plans, such as refueling in space, via multiple launches, needed to send the vehicle out of low-Earth orbit toward the Moon.

The Blue Origin accident will also inevitably affect the company’s capabilities for other NASA missions. New Glenn was scheduled to fly a small, uncrewed spacecraft, the Blue Moon Mark 1 lander, to the lunar surface later this year. And on Tuesday, NASA announced additional contracts with Blue Origin for two New Glenn launches intended to send lunar all-terrain vehicles to the Moon as early as 2028. The vehicles would be driven by astronauts on future Artemis missions.

This setback also compounds with others on New Glenn’s rocky path to reliable use. Next week’s launch would have been just New Glenn’s fourth, after its third flight on April 19 placed a satellite from AST SpaceMobile into a lower orbit than planned due to a malfunction in the rocket’s second stage. As a result, the satellite worth $23 million burned up in the Earth’s atmosphere.