Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin took a hard hit Thursday night when its massive New Glenn rocket exploded on a Florida launchpad during a test, the latest twist in the billionaire space race against Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
Video from NASASpaceflight captured the moment at about 9:00 p.m. ET, Thursday, May 28. The 29-story, uncrewed New Glenn ignited on the pad before bursting into a fireball that shot flames and smoke skyward. No one was injured.
Blue Origin was running a “hot-fire” test ahead of New Glenn’s fourth flight. That mission was supposed to carry 48 Amazon Leo broadband satellites to low-Earth orbit to rival Musk’s Starlink. The satellites weren’t loaded on the rocket when the explosion happened, a source familiar with the test said.
The setback stings. New Glenn is years behind schedule and was meant to be Blue Origin’s workhorse for launching cargo, lunar landers, and NASA’s Artemis moon missions. The timing makes it worse: NASA awarded Blue Origin $188 million just two days earlier to land rovers on the moon, and SpaceX scored a mostly successful Starship test less than a week ago.
Blue Origin called it an “anomaly” during the ground test. Bezos posted on X: “Very rough day, but we’ll rebuild whatever needs rebuilding and get back to flying. It’s worth it.” The cause is still under investigation.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said the agency will work with Blue Origin on the probe. “Spaceflight is unforgiving, and developing new heavy-lift launch capability is extraordinarily difficult,” he posted on X. He added that NASA will update on any impacts to Artemis and its Moon Base plans.
The explosion puts more pressure on Blue Origin as SpaceX pulls ahead. Musk’s company is prepping a trillion-dollar IPO and just deployed mock satellites on Starship’s 12th test, though it missed a controlled landing of the Super Heavy booster. Musk reacted to the New Glenn blast with three words on X: “Most unfortunate. Rockets are hard.”
Blue Origin has spent billions and a decade building New Glenn with a reusable first stage to compete with SpaceX’s Falcon and Starship rockets. The FAA said the blast happened outside regulated airspace and didn’t disrupt flights.
For Bezos, the path to catching Musk just got bumpier. For the space race, the drama keeps coming.
