An aerial view on Friday showed a crumpled collection of buildings on the ground, with only a tower and water tank still standing.
CAPE CANAVERAL Space Force Station, Fla. — Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin is assessing damage to its launch pad A rocket exploded During one test firing, a huge orange fireball was produced that could be seen and felt for miles around.
The company fuels a huge new glenn rocket Thursday night, it hopes to briefly ignite the engines ahead of next week’s satellite launch. But the 321-foot (98-meter) rocket exploded, taking part of the launch pad with it.
An aerial view on Friday showed a crumpled collection of buildings on the ground, with only a tower and water tank still standing. Emergency officials warned the public to avoid any debris that may have washed ashore and to call 911. There have been no reports of casualties.
This is a major setback for Blue Origin, which comes just a month after the entire New Glenn fleet was grounded after an upper-stage engine problem threw a satellite into the wrong orbit.
New Glenn, named after John Glenn, the first American to reach orbit, is a rocket used by the Blue Origin program Launch a lander to the moon Under NASA’s Artemis program, the plan aims to build a massive base near the moon’s south pole. The goal is to land the first Artemis moonwalkers as early as 2028. Earlier this week, the space agency awarded Blue Origin a new contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
New Glenn is one of the largest rockets ever put into orbit, with seven first-stage engines fueled by liquid oxygen and liquefied natural gas (essentially methane). Already flown 3 times.
The latest rocket was without its allotment of 48 Amazon Leo satellites when the explosion occurred. Another batch of Amazon Leo satellites – which compete with SpaceX’s Starlinks to provide internet service to remote areas – lifted off Friday night from another launch pad at the Space Force Station in Cape Canaveral, powered by a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket.
This is the second launch of the day. On Friday morning, within 12 hours of the explosion, SpaceX launched more Starlink satellites into orbit. CEO Elon Musk has two launch pads in Florida, one on the Space Force side where the latest Falcon 9 takes off, and another at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.
Blue Origin has only one launch site in Florida: Launch Complex 36, which dates back to the early 1960s. NASA’s Mariner and Pioneer interstellar probes launched from there, as did the Moon-bound Ranger and Surveyor spacecraft. Washington state-based Blue Origin spent more than $1 billion to rebuild the launch site after leasing it from the Air Force in 2015, changing it from a dual launch site to a single launch site.
The company’s smaller New Shepard rocket took off from Texas and flew through space carrying tourists and scientific experiments for several minutes. These suborbital jumps were paused in January so the company could focus on New Glenn and its upcoming moon landings. All of that is now on hold pending an investigation into the explosion.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said late Thursday that the space agency will assess the near-term impact of the Artemis program, which saw four astronauts orbit the moon in April. The Artemis 2 mission was launched on NASA’s Space Launch System rocket.
Before the explosion, Blue Origin was planning to launch a prototype lunar lander to the moon this fall with New Glenn, and another lander will be rocketed into Earth orbit in 2027 for docking exercises with the soon-to-be-announced Artemis III crew.
The two astronauts plan to land on Artemis IV as early as 2028 using a Blue Moon lander or SpaceX’s Starship (whichever is ready first).
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