Blue Origin’s New Glenn mega rocket just exploded during testing at the launch site in Cape Canaveral, Florida, according to a live stream on NASASpaceFlight.com and SpaceFlight Now. Blue Origin later confirmed the explosion.
Jeff Bezos’ space company was conducting static fire tests ahead of the fourth launch of a new rocket scheduled to carry the Amazon Leo internet satellite into space in the coming weeks. This means the rocket was fully fueled, likely contributing to one of the largest rocket explosions in U.S. history and the worst failure in Blue Origin’s existence.
Blue Origin said in an The company did not specify what went wrong, only saying an “anomaly” occurred.
“It’s too early to know the root cause, but we’re already working to find it. It’s a very tough day, but we’ll rebuild whatever needs to be rebuilt and fly again. It’s worth it,” Bezos wrote.
“NASA will work with our partners to support a thorough investigation of this anomaly, assess near-term mission impacts, and resume rocket launches,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in a post late Thursday.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) told TechCrunch in a statement that it was aware of the explosion and that “there was no impact to air traffic.” NASA and the Space Force did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The explosion will likely mean the New Glenn rocket program will have to be paused for an extended period while Blue Origin fixes the problem. Blue Origin had planned to attempt 12 New Glenn launches this year after developing it for about a decade to compete with Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
The company will also power NASA’s Artemis mission to the moon, highlighting Blue Origin’s anticipated role in that program earlier this week. Isaacman said Thursday that NASA “will provide input on the Artemis and Moon Base programs as they become available.”
Blue Origin also aims to launch national security missions for the Department of Defense.
“This is the most unfortunate thing. Rockets are difficult,” Elon Musk wrote to X shortly after the explosion. “I hope you recover quickly.”
The explosion occurred just weeks after the third flight of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket. The mission itself suffered a failure when the New Glenn upper stage failed to place the AST SpaceMobile satellite into orbit, resulting in a complete loss. Just last week, the FAA cleared New Glenn to fly again after Blue Origin completed its investigation into the cause of the failure.
very new and late rocket
Blue Origin spent several years developing New Glenn while testing smaller suborbital rockets with its New Shepard program. While New Shepard has been taking the rich and famous (including on some scientific missions) to the edge of space on a fairly regular basis, Blue Origin has been working tirelessly in the background to develop a rocket that can launch actual commercial payloads, like large satellites, into orbit.
The work took longer than Blue Origin expected, but it finally culminated in January 2025, when the company first flew over New Glenn.
New Glenn immediately appeared to be a fairly successful rocket. The booster stage exploded before Blue Origin attempted to land on the drone ship at sea, but it reached orbit during its first flight.
Blue Origin was even more successful with New Glenn’s second flight in November 2025. During that mission, the company launched twin spacecraft to Mars for NASA. Blue Origin also launched its first booster stage during New Glenn’s second mission.
This allowed the company to fly the booster again on New Glenn’s third mission, demonstrating not only the ability to recover the first stage, but also to retrofit it for reuse. This is an important step in reducing the overall cost of running a launch business.
The reused rocket booster had no trouble flying again, and even landed a second time on one of Blue Origin’s drone ships during New Glenn’s third mission in April 2026. However, the company experienced a cryogenic failure in the upper stage during the third mission, resulting in the loss of the satellite.
This fourth mission was scheduled to be the first of 24 launches Amazon had contracted with Blue Origin. Amazon is currently building Leo, a competitor to SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet network. On Wednesday, Amazon called New Glenn a “reusable heavy rocket” and touted its ability to build a network using Blue Origin.
Amazon confirmed to TechCrunch late Thursday that the Leo satellite was not onboard for this test.
Rep. Mike Haridopoulos (R-FL), who represents the district where Cape Canaveral is located, wrote in X that he spoke with NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman about the explosion late Thursday.
“We are grateful that no injuries were reported and we thank the first responders, engineers and launch crew who acted quickly. We pray for everyone involved with Florida’s Space Coast,” he said.
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