This still image from a Spaceflight Now video shows the aftermath of a massive explosion and fireball after an anomaly with Blue Origin's NG-4 New Glenn rocket booster on May, 28, 2026.
(Image credit: Spaceflight Now)
The recent explosion of Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket during a routine test is a big setback for the private spaceflight company, and will likely have implications for NASA's Artemis program timeline and the nation's efforts to return astronauts to the surface of the moon.The May 28 incident, in which no one was injured, occurred while Blue Origin prepared its fourth New Glenn rocket for launch. A static test fire of the vehicle's engines at Launch Complex-36 (LC-36), located at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) in Florida, was the rocket's last major milestone before a liftoff targeted for June 4. During that test, however, an explosion destroyed the rocket and severely damaged launch infrastructure on the ground. (The payload for that flight, a group of 48 Amazon Leo internet satellites, was not aboard the rocket when it exploded.)The mishap is a major blow to Blue Origin's progress with New Glenn, which was only cleared to proceed with the upcoming flight a week ago. New Glenn had been grounded pending a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) investigation after the NG-3 mission in April, when a failure of the rocket's second stage stranded AST SpaceMobile’s BlueBird 7 satellite payload in an unstable orbit. Now, with another investigation opening, and extensive repairs needed at LC-36, New Glenn may be grounded for a while, potentially forcing NASA to change its expectations for how Blue Origin will support upcoming Artemis missions."This is a pretty significant incident to happen to Blue Origin," Kathleen Curlee, a commercial space industry research analyst at Georgetown University's Center for Security and Emerging Technology, told Space.com in an interview.New Glenn is Blue Origin's partially reusable heavy-lift launch vehicle, designed to compete with SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Starship rockets. Before New Glenn, New Shepard was the only rocket Blue Origin ever launched to space, and each of those flights was suborbital. Though long delayed in its initial debut, New Glenn made it to orbit on its first launch in January 2025 and performed a successful landing of the rocket's first stage during its second mission (NG-2). And, despite the second stage shortfalls of NG-3, that mission managed to reuse NG-2's landed booster core (with new engines), which performed a second successful landing on Blue Origin's recovery droneship "Jacklyn," in the Atlantic Ocean.All that progress now comes to a screeching halt while Blue Origin investigates the cause of New Glenn's explosion and faces the task of rebuilding LC-36. In the meantime, the 2027 target to launch the next mission in NASA's Artemis program, Artemis 3, inches ever closer, and the time for Blue Origin to RSVP to the party draws nearer.The Artemis program aims to create a sustained human presence with a base on the moon, and eventually develop technologies that can support crewed missions to Mars. The agency selected Blue Origin and SpaceX to support that effort, contracting each company to design and build lunar landers capable of delivering astronauts to the moon's surface and launching them back to lunar orbit to rendezvous with NASA's Orion spacecraft.
