A New Glenn rocket, the most ambitious project of the aerospace company Blue Origin — owned by magnate Jeff Bezos — suffered an explosion that triggered a colossal fireball during a test on its launch pad in Cape Canaveral (Florida, USA), carried out at 3:00 a.m. this Friday, Spanish peninsular time. With this space shuttle model, Bezos aims to beat Elon Musk in his particular space race to take the first astronauts to the surface of the Moon since 1972.
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Earlier this Tuesday, NASA had commissioned Blue Origin for the first mission to start building its lunar base, which was supposed to launch this fall. The U.S. space agency has not yet clarified how this setback — the biggest accident in the history of Bezos’s space company — will affect those plans to establish a permanent human colony on the Moon and, more generally, the Artemis program with which the U.S. wants to return to the Moon in 2028, before China achieves it.
“An anomaly occurred during today’s static fire test,” the company explained in a message posted on social media, adding that “all personnel have been confirmed safe.”
Blue Origin’s New Glenn just blew up at LC-36 while attempting to Static Fire ahead of NG-4.https://t.co/tANS0dWyIH pic.twitter.com/PztxFoBqIw
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— NSF – NASASpaceflight.com (@NASASpaceflight) May 29, 2026
For his part, Bezos indicated that, although “it is too early” to know the cause of what happened, work is already underway to find out. “It has been a very tough day, but we will rebuild whatever is necessary and fly again. It is worth it,” Bezos concluded regarding this event that occurred in Cape Canaveral, an area considered one of the main centers for North American space activities.
Specifically, it is the New Glenn, a “giant and reusable” rocket designed by Blue Origin, which recently announced its plans to resume flights after a failure recorded during the rocket’s third flight prompted an investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration. Knowing the facts, NASA director Jared Isaacman stated in a social media message that “space flights do not forgive” and that “developing a new heavy-lift launch capability is extraordinarily difficult.” Therefore, he committed to collaborating with his “partners” to “support a thorough investigation of this anomaly, assess the short-term impacts on missions, and relaunch rockets.”
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