Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket explodes in massive fireball during testing in Florida

[midian182]

What just happened? Blue Origin's long-delayed New Glenn program has suffered a dramatic setback. A rocket being prepared for what would have been the vehicle's fourth flight exploded during a hotfire test at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station yesterday, destroying the vehicle in a massive fireball that lit up Florida's Space Coast.

The test took place at Launch Complex 36 at about 9 pm ET. Static fire tests verify engines and ground systems while the rocket remains clamped to the pad – it's usually one of the final checks before launch. In this case, livestream footage showed the vehicle beginning to fire before flames spread around the base and New Glenn disappeared inside an explosion.

Blue Origin described the incident as an "anomaly," adding that everyone was safe.

"We experienced an anomaly during today's hotfire test. We will provide updates as we learn more."

Jeff Bezos later posted that all personnel were accounted for and safe, adding:

"It's too early to know the root cause but we're already working to find it. Very rough day, but we'll rebuild whatever needs rebuilding and get back to flying. It's worth it."

– Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) May 29, 2026

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) told TechCrunch it was aware of the explosion and said there was "no impact to air traffic."

The good news is that there were no reported injuries or fatalities, and the 48 Amazon Leo satellites New Glenn was expected to carry were not on board. The bad news is that Blue Origin has only one dedicated New Glenn launchpad, and footage after the blast suggested severe damage to surrounding equipment, which could mean a lengthy pause for the program.

The rocket had been preparing for an early June mission to place Amazon's Leo broadband satellites into low Earth orbit, part of the company's attempt to build a Starlink rival. New Glenn is also central to Blue Origin's wider ambitions, including national security launches and NASA work. The company was planning to attempt as many as 12 launches of New Glenn this year.

– Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) May 29, 2026

The explosion comes at a difficult moment for Bezos' space firm. New Glenn reached orbit on its first flight in January 2025 after years of delays, though the booster was lost before it could land.

Its second flight, in November, was more encouraging. But April's third flight suffered a cryogenic upper-stage failure that left an AST SpaceMobile satellite in the wrong orbit. The FAA cleared the rocket to fly again only last week.

New Glenn is expected to support Artemis and Moon Base missions, and NASA awarded Blue Origin a $188 million lunar rover delivery contract just days before the explosion.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said the agency would support the investigation.

"Spaceflight is unforgiving, and developing new heavy-lift launch capability is extraordinarily difficult."

– NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman (@NASAAdmin) May 29, 2026

SpaceX chief Elon Musk offered his own reaction: "Most unfortunate. Rockets are hard."

– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 29, 2026

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Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket explodes in massive fireball during testing in Florida

 

[pnntmp]

Hopefully they learned from SpaceX and this explosion is merely a source of new data.

 

[TooQik]

That's one spicy meatball!

 

[wiyosaya]

Hopefully they learned from SpaceX and this explosion is merely a source of new data.

My bet is that its hard to tell whether any data from SpaceX will apply in this case. If the rocket's designs are similar enough, then there may be some correlation in failure case. Even so, the cause may be entirely different in nature.

Blue Origin will figure it out, and so far, Blue Origin's failure rate is less than that of SpaceX for similar vehicles.

 

[Plutoisaplanet]

Hopefully they learned from SpaceX and this explosion is merely a source of new data.

Lol SpaceX only says that when they get their rockets in the air and actually completes some new milestones. They only ever had one Starahip explode on the ground and this was their full comment afterwards:

 

[Theinsanegamer]

My bet is that its hard to tell whether any data from SpaceX will apply in this case. If the rocket's designs are similar enough, then there may be some correlation in failure case. Even so, the cause may be entirely different in nature.

Blue Origin will figure it out, and so far, Blue Origin's failure rate is less than that of SpaceX for similar vehicles.

New Glenn only came online in 2025. Space x launched more orbital vehicles in 4 months then blue origin has launched in its entirety with this vehicle. They launched 165 total in 2025.

New Glenn has launched 3. One of which, seen here, failed spectacularly. In total blue origin had just 15 launches in 2025.

So based on rates, LMFAO no. Space x does not have a 33% failure rate. Even if you combined all of space x together, you get just 7 failures out of a combined 200+ flights from January 2025 to present.

When blue origin gets to a comparable launch cycle to space x then the failure rates will be much easier to compare. As it is they launch far too few for the data to be comparable.

 

[abactuon]

"SpaceX chief Elon Musk offered his own reaction: "Most unfortunate. Rockets are hard.""
It's hard for Elon Musk. For Wernher von Braun, it wasn't difficult.

 

[p51d007]

Nothing more than an RUD
Rapid
Unplanned
Disassembly

 

[MasterFig]

My bet is that its hard to tell whether any data from SpaceX will apply in this case. If the rocket's designs are similar enough, then there may be some correlation in failure case. Even so, the cause may be entirely different in nature.

Blue Origin will figure it out, and so far, Blue Origin's failure rate is less than that of SpaceX for similar vehicles.

That's not what he was saying. He meant that hopefully they can gather good information from the accident so that they can prevent it from happening again. Similar to what Space X was able when they had similar accidents.