Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket explodes during prelaunch testing at Cape Canaveral

A Blue Origin New Glenn rocket exploded on its launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Thursday night, in a major setback for Blue Origin, the company founded by Jeff Bezos.

The rocket erupted in a giant fire ball that engulfed the launch pad at 9 p.m. EDT (0100 UTC) as the engines appeared to be igniting for a pre-launch test known as a static fire. New Glenn had been slated to launch a batch of satellites for another Bezos venture, Amazon Leo, as soon as Thursday, June 4.

“All personnel are accounted for and safe. It’s too early to know the root cause but we’re already working to find it,” Bezos wrote in a post on social media. “Very rough day, but we’ll rebuild whatever needs rebuilding and get back to flying. It’s worth it.”

The Amazon Leo satellites had not been transported to the launch site from its payload processing facility to be integrated with the rocket. This was set to be the first of 24 launches that Amazon Leo booked on New Glenn rockets.

With two unrelated launches scheduled for Friday, May 29, Space Launch Delta 45, which manages the Eastern Range, released a statement to confirm that “The Eastern Range remains fully mission capable for National Security Space Launch and continues to support operations at all other launch complexes.”

“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,” an SLD 45 spokesperson said. “These operations often involve developmental systems and emerging technologies, and the nature of such testing carries inherent risk, including the potential for anomalies.”

Blue Origin had just received clearance from the Federal Aviation Administration to resume launches of its New Glenn rocket on Friday, May 22. During the New Glenn 3 (NG-3) mission, the rocket suffered an in-flight anomaly with its upper stage that prevented it from placing AST SpaceMobile’s BlueBird-7 satellite into the correct orbit.

“The FAA oversaw and accepted the findings of the Blue Origin-led investigation. The final mishap report identified the direct cause of the mishap as a cryogenic leak that froze a hydraulic line and led to a thrust anomaly during the second stage engine burn,” the FAA said in a statement on May 27.

“Blue Origin identified nine corrective actions to prevent reoccurrence of the event. The FAA will verify that Blue Origin implements corrective actions prior to the launch of the next New Glenn mission.”

The FAA told Spaceflight Now the static fire explosion would not prompt a new investigation by that agency: “This test was not within the scope of FAA licensed activities. There was no impact to air traffic.”

Short-term, long-term impacts

The anomaly Thursday night appeared to destroy at least one of the lightning protection towers at LC-36 and the transporter erector. Until a full assessment is completed, it’s impossible to know exactly how long it will take to resume launch operations at pad.

If the issue is connected back to the main propulsion system and the rocket’s methane-fueled BE-4 engines, that might have a direct impact on United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rockets. That launch vehicle was grounded due to a solid rocket booster anomaly, but both vehicles use the BE-4 engine for their first stages.

NASA is also heavily relying on Blue Origin and it’s New Glenn rocket to support the Artemis Program and its Moon Base ambitions. On Tuesday, the agency held an event to announce several contract awards for future missions, including tapping Blue Origin to deliver a pair of lunar terrain vehicles to the lunar surface using its Blue Moon Mark 1 lander.

Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mark 2 crewed lander was also selected by NASA as one of two landers for the Human Landing System program. It along with SpaceX’s Starship rocket will be used to dock with the Orion spacecraft on future Artemis missions and bring astronauts to the lunar surface and back up into lunar orbit.

A version of the Blue Moon Mk.2 is also slated to participate in the Artemis 3 mission, which will be an Apollo 9 style demonstration in low Earth orbit to buy down risks for the Moon landing missions. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said on Tuesday that Artemis 3 was scheduled to launch in mid-2027.

“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. 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,” Isaacman wrote in a statement on social media. “We will provide information on any impacts to the Artemis and Moon Base programs as it becomes available.”

The last major launch pad explosion at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station was back in September 2016 when a helium tank rupture caused a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to explode at Space Launch Complex 40, a few miles north of Launch Complex 36.

Because SpaceX already had multiple launch pads when that explosion happened, it was able to resume Falcon 9 launches from Vandenberg Space Force Base in January 2017, followed a month later by its first launch from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center. However, it wasn’t until the launch of CRS-13 in December 2017 when SpaceX returned to flying rockets off of pad 40.

Launch Complex 36 is currently Blue Origin’s only orbital launch facility. The investigation into the root cause of the accident is likely to be completed long before Blue Origin can get the pad back into operation.