Blue Origin’s New Glenn megarocket just exploded during a test at a launch site in Cape Canaveral, Florida, according to to live broadcasts from NASASpaceFlight.com and Space Flight Now. Blue Origin later confirmed the explosion.
Jeff Bezos’ space company was conducting a static fire test ahead of the fourth launch planned in the coming weeks of the new rocket, which was supposed to carry the Amazon Leo internet satellites into space. That means the rocket was likely full of fuel, contributing to what is one of the largest rocket explosions in US history and the worst failure in Blue Origin’s existence.
blue origin saying in an X post Thursday night that “(all staff have been accounted for), and Bezos wrote that they were “safe.” The company did not say what went wrong, only that an “anomaly” occurred.
“It’s too early to know the root cause, but we’re already working to find it. A very tough day, but we’ll rebuild what’s necessary and fly again. It’s worth it,” Bezos wrote.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in a mail On Thursday night, the agency “will work with our partners to support a thorough investigation of this anomaly, assess near-term mission impacts, and relaunch rockets.”
In a statement, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) told TechCrunch that it was aware of the explosion and said there was “no impact to air traffic.” NASA and the Space Force did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The explosion likely means Blue Origin will have to pause the New Glenn rocket program for an extended period while it fixes what went wrong. Blue Origin had planned to attempt up to 12 New Glenn launches this year, after the company spent about a decade developing it in an attempt to compete with Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
The company is also supposed to help power NASA’s Artemis missions to the moon, with the agency highlighting what’s expected from Blue Origin. role on that show earlier this week. Isaacman said Thursday that NASA “will provide any impact to the Artemis and Moon Base programs as they become available.”
Blue Origin also aims to launch national security missions for the Pentagon.
“It’s very unfortunate. Rockets are hard,” Elon Musk wrote in X shortly after the explosion. “I hope you recover quickly.”
The explosion comes just weeks after Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket flew for the third time. That mission suffered its own failure when New Glenn’s upper stage failed to launch an AST SpaceMobile satellite into orbitcausing the total loss of the mission. Last week, the FAA cleared New Glenn to fly again after Blue Origin completed an investigation into the cause of the failure.
A very new and late rocket.
Blue Origin has spent years developing New Glenn while using its New Shepard program to test smaller-scale suborbital rockets. While New Shepard has transported a fairly regular cadence of rich people and celebrities (along with a few scientific missions) to the edge of space, Blue Origin was constantly working in the background to develop a rocket that could put real commercial payloads, like large satellites, into orbit.
That work took a long time (longer than Blue Origin had anticipated) but finally came to a head in January 2025, when the company flew in New Glenn for the first time.
New Glenn seemed to be a fairly successful rocket from the start. It reached orbit during that first flight, although the booster stage exploded before Blue Origin could attempt to land it on an unmanned ship in the ocean.
However, Blue Origin had even more success with the second flight of New Glenn in November 2025. During that mission, the company launched twin spacecraft to Mars for NASA. Blue Origin also landed its first booster stage during the second New Glenn mission.
That allowed the company to re-fly the booster on New Glenn’s third mission, demonstrating not only the ability to recover the first stage but also restore it for reuse, a critical step in reducing the overall cost of operating a launch business.
The reused booster rocket had no problems flying again, and even landed a second time on one of Blue Origin’s drone ships, during the New Glenn flight. third mission in April 2026. But the company experienced a cryogenic upper stage failure during mission three, resulting in the loss of the satellite.
This upcoming fourth mission was supposed to be the first of 24 launches that Amazon has contracted Blue Origin for. Amazon is currently building a competitor to SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet network, which it calls Leo. On Wednesday, Amazonas promoted its ability to rely on Blue Origin to build the network, calling New Glenn a “reusable heavy-lift rocket.”
Amazon confirmed to TechCrunch on Thursday evening that there were no Leo satellites on board for this test.
On Thursday night, Congressman Mike Haridopolos (R-FL), who represents the district that is home to Cape Canaveral, wrote in X that he had spoken to NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman about the explosion.
“I am grateful that no injuries were reported and grateful for the first responders, engineers and launch teams who acted quickly. Praying for Florida’s Space Coast and everyone involved,” he said.
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