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Blue Origin plans to launch New Glenn again this year after explosion
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Blue Origin is planning to fly its New Glenn rocket again in 2026 despite last week’s massive explosion, according to CEO Dave Limp. Limp said Monday that more of the launchpad’s infrastructure was in “good shape” than expected following the explosion, which happened during testing at the company’s site in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Limp also said that another previously flown New Glenn rocket booster that was at the launch complex, along with three of the rocket’s upper stages, “also look good.” “We will fly again before the end of this year,” he said. It’s an aggressive timeline for returning to flight after what was the largest and most visible failure of the company’s history. Many people in the space industry assumed it would take Blue Origin at least until 2027 before New Glenn would launch again, especially because it seemed like there was a lot of damage to the launchpad — the only one Blue Origin has at the moment that can support New Glenn. Blue Origin has also not yet said what caused the explosion. The company now finds itself in a unique strategic position. While SpaceX recovered in a matter of months after one of its Falcon 9 rockets blew up on a launchpad in 2016, that quick turnaround was due to the fact that it had a second pad nearly ready at the time of the mishap. Blue Origin is building a second launchpad at Cape Canaveral, but that project is in very early stages. NASA is relying on Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket for its planned series of Artemis missions to the moon. Jeff Bezos’ spaceflight company had completely shifted focus to this program in order to support those missions, announcing in January that it was pausing space tourism flights on the much smaller New Shepard rocket for at least two years. New Glenn’s first launch took place in January 2025, after spending many years in development — and suffering a number of delays. That inaugural launch was largely successful, with the upper stage reaching orbit on its first attempt, but the booster stage exploded on its way back to Earth. The second New Glenn launch, in November, saw Blue Origin put a pair of Mars-bound spacecraft into space and land its first booster stage on a drone ship. The company flew that booster stage again in April on New Glenn’s third mission, but the upper stage suffered a failure and the customer payload — an AST SpaceMobile satellite — was lost. Blue Origin was preparing to launch a batch of satellites for Bezos’ other company, Amazon, on the fourth launch. The spaceflight company had not put those satellites on board yet, so they weren’t destroyed in the explosion. While there was some speculation that Blue Origin might proceed directly to the larger and more powerful New Glenn variant when it returned to flight, Limp shot down that idea on Monday. The company will, however, change how it carries its rockets to the launchpad, and how it stands them up. Previously, Blue Origin used what it called a “transporter-erector,” which could handle both tasks. Limp didn’t specify what Blue Origin’s new solution will look like. When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence. Sean O’Kane is a reporter who has spent a decade covering the rapidly-evolving business and technology of the transportation industry, including Tesla and the many startups chasing Elon Musk. Most recently, he was a reporter at Bloomberg News where he helped break stories about some of the most notorious EV SPAC flops. He previously worked at The Verge, where he also covered consumer technology, hosted many short- and long-form videos, performed product and editorial photography, and once nearly passed out in a Red Bull Air Race plane. You can contact or verify outreach from Sean by emailing or via encrypted message at okane.01 on Signal. View Bio
Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket exploded on Thursday night during a hotfire test on the launch pad, lighting up the skies around the launch site in Cape Canaveral, Florida. In a post on X, Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos said that all personnel had been accounted for.“It’s too early to know the root cause but we’re already working to find it,” Bezos wrote. “Very rough day, but we’ll rebuild whatever needs rebuilding and get back to flying. It’s worth it.”What Is a Hotfire Test?The test during which Blue Origin’s rocket—a vehicle that, at 98 meters tall, is one of the largest ever built—exploded is known as a hotfire test, or static fire test. Essentially, it is a standard procedure carried out on the engines of a rocket, spacecraft, or prototype, in which the engines are ignited for a very short period of time and then shut down while the vehicle remains secured to the launch pad. The purpose of this test is to verify that the systems are functioning correctly before an actual launch.Blue Origin's RocketThis would have been the fourth mission of the New Glenn rocket, which was slated to carry 48 satellites, destined to become part of Amazon Leo's satellite Internet network, as soon as next week. "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," said NASA administrator Jared Isaacman in a post on X. “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 further said that NASA would provide updates on any potential impacts to the Artemis and Moon Base missions when they were available; the agency has contracted with both Blue Origin and SpaceX for various aspects of its plans for a lunar return.This explosion represents the latest setback for Bezos's company. On April 19, a failure occurred during the rocket's third flight that prompted a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) investigation. During that mission, the rocket's first stage had successfully landed on a floating platform, but the upper, or second stage, had failed to carry its payload—AST SpaceMobile's BlueBird 7 satellite— into a safe orbit. That investigation was just completed on May 22.This story originally appeared in WIRED Italia and has been translated from Italian.
Image Credits:Blue Origin 6:22 PM PDT · May 28, 2026 Blue Origin’s New Glenn mega-rocket just exploded during testing at a launch site in Cape Canaveral, Florida, according to a live stream from NASASpaceFlight.com. Jeff Bezos’ space company was performing a static fire test ahead of an anticipated fourth launch of the new rocket in the coming weeks. Rocket companies routinely clear out launchpads during testing, but it’s not immediately clear if anyone was injured. Blue Origin, NASA, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), 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 of time while it works through what went wrong. Blue Origin had been planning to attempt as many as 12 launches of New Glenn this year, after the company spent around 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 Blue Origin’s expected role in that program earlier this week. “Most unfortunate. Rockets are hard,” Elon Musk wrote on X shortly after the explosion. The explosion comes just a few weeks after Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket flew for the third time ever. That mission suffered its own failure when the New Glenn upper stage failed to deliver a satellite for AST SpaceMobile into orbit, causing a total loss of the mission. Just last week, the FAA cleared New Glenn to fly again after Blue Origin completed an investigation into the cause of the failure. This story is developing. Check back for updates. Topics When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence. Sean O’Kane is a reporter who has spent a decade covering the rapidly-evolving business and technology of the transportation industry, including Tesla and the many startups chasing Elon Musk. Most recently, he was a reporter at Bloomberg News where he helped break stories about some of the most notorious EV SPAC flops. He previously worked at The Verge, where he also covered consumer technology, hosted many short- and long-form videos, performed product and editorial photography, and once nearly passed out in a Red Bull Air Race plane. You can contact or verify outreach from Sean by emailing sean.okane@techcrunch.com or via encrypted message at okane.01 on Signal. View Bio
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