A New Glenn rocket from Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin company exploded during a test in Florida on Thursday night, throwing NASA's plans to build a lunar base and return humans to the moon into jeopardy.
Explosion Details
A massive fireball engulfed and destroyed the launchpad at the Kennedy Space Center seconds after the start of the scheduled “hotfire” test at 9pm ET. The orange sky was visible in Fort Pierce, 185km (115 miles) to the south. Shockwaves were felt along Florida's space coast, and residents in South Carolina reported seeing a glow in the sky. Homes shook in nearby Cape Canaveral and Cocoa Beach.
No personnel were harmed in the incident, the company said on social media, calling the explosion an ‘anomaly’. Jeff Bezos tweeted that all employees were accounted for, safe and uninjured, but lamented a “very rough day”.
Impact on NASA's Lunar Plans
Blue Origin intends to use the New Glenn rocket to launch landers to the moon for NASA, including those that will take astronauts to the lunar surface. On Tuesday, NASA announced that Blue Origin had won a contract to launch the first of three planned missions this year to begin construction of its $20bn moon base. The company is also competing with Elon Musk's SpaceX to provide a lunar lander for the Artemis IV mission planned for 2028.
Jared Isaacman, the NASA administrator, posted to X that a full evaluation of the timeline would be conducted after the explosion. “Spaceflight is unforgiving, and developing new heavy-lift launch capability is extraordinarily difficult,” he wrote. “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.”
Bezos and Musk React
Bezos said: “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.” Elon Musk, SpaceX CEO, commented on X: “Most unfortunate. Rockets are hard.”
Previous Setbacks
Blue Origin has endured a sequence of setbacks as it vies with SpaceX for NASA contracts for the Artemis program. A payload from the third flight of New Glenn ended up in the wrong orbit during a flight last month, and the rocket was temporarily grounded by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Thursday's test was the first static fire test since the FAA cleared it to return to flight last week. The FAA did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding whether Thursday's explosion will trigger another investigation.
Both Blue Origin and SpaceX have built large new facilities in or close to the Cape Canaveral space center to support crewed and cargo missions in partnership with NASA. Artemis III, planned for 2027, is scheduled to test Blue Origin's Blue Moon lander and SpaceX's Starship Human Landing System to determine which will ferry the Artemis IV crew from the Orion capsule to the lunar surface.
