Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum

Disaster for New Glenn!

They were conducting a NG static-fire at Pad 36 at Cape Canaveral and something went dramatically wrong, causing New Glenn to violently explode with shock waves and a huge fireball.

Eric Berger comments that this could delay Blue Origin for a year or even more, which will definitely impact the NASA Moon Base launches that hoped to use New Glenn to launch Blue's Mk.1 cargo lander later this year.

https://x.com/SciGuySpace/status/2060168648426242444

---

---

---

This is probably the largest explosion in Cape Canaveral history.

Emergency responders are on the scene. Everyone is accounted for and there are no reports of injuries or fatalities. The fires seem to be dying down but there's still lots of smoke.

But the pad is probably totally wrecked... Blue will have to rebuild their pad the way that SpaceX had to rebuild Masseys after the S36 explosion. And it's the only New Glenn pad that Blue Origin has/had.

The Space Force says that the Eastern Range is still fully operational. There isn't any known damage to the other Cape Canaveral pads.

Eric Berger is on the case!

https://arstechnica.com/spaceA/2026/05/b...fire-test/

Eric says:

Quote:The most spectacular rocket explosion since N1 just happened in Florida
New Glenn was due to play a starring role in NASA’s Artemis Program...

The failure of New Glenn also has major implications for NASA and its surging efforts to return humans to the Moon before the end of this decade, and to establish a lunar base on the surface.

On Tuesday NASA announced that it had selected the New Glenn rocket to deliver the first two rovers, built by Lunar Outpost and Astrolab, to the lunar surface in 2028. Blue Origin has developed its own cargo lunar lander, Blue Moon Mark 1, designed to fly on top of New Glenn. It was due to launch this fall to the Moon for the first time, and again next year carrying the VIPER rover to the Moon for NASA...

It is too early to determine the impacts from this failure, but they will be considerable. Early reports from sources suggest that the launch infrastructure at LC-36A is severely damaged. A source indicated that one of the lightning towers may not be salvageable, and that the transporter-erector may also be damaged beyond repair.

The company recently began construction on a second New Glenn launch site nearby, LC-36B. However work there is in its early stages. It is possible, however, that completing this new launch tower may be faster than rebuilding LC-36A. New Glenn almost certainly will not launch again in 2026, and frankly a launch during the first half of 2027 would be heroic given the launch site concerns...

Space Flight Now: "If the issue is connected back to the main propulsion system and the rocket’s methane-fueled BE-4 engines, that might have a direct impact on United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rockets. That launch vehicle was grounded due to a solid rocket booster anomaly, but both vehicles use the BE-4 engine for their first stages."

Blue Origin's pad after the explosion. What remains of the totalled Transporter-Erector is on the ramp. The tower to the left still stands, but is damaged so severely that speculation is that it will have to be demolished. A matching tower on the right is just... gone. A bunker to the left that might have contained electrical controls or valves appears to be a total loss. There's probably severe damage to pipes and conduits all around. The white horizontal "hotdog" tanks to the upper left appear to have survived.

(Aerial photos by Gavin Richmond of Launch Heaven)



A wider view. The horizontal integration building on the lower left appears intact, but reportedly suffered some overpressure damage. It contained the only other complete and flyable New Glenn booster. Hopefully that isn't it to the right. (It might be their earlier fit-check mockup.) There are several fabric-roofed tents that look torn up. The tank farm to the left appears to be in surprisingly good shape and is probably repairable. The future site for the second New Glenn pad is beyond that. It's obviously in its very early ground preparation stages with what appears to be a pile drilling auger visible.

All in all, the New Glenn pad looks better than I'd feared and probably won't have to be totally replaced. But repairs will probably take at least six months I'm guessing. Perhaps more like a year. It still means big delays both for NASA's Moon plans and for Amazon's attempts to use NG to launch lots of satellites to compete with Starlink.

(Aerial photos by Greg Scott)

If you expand these photos and look at them in detail, almost everything in sight shows signs of damage.

Jared was at Cape Canaveral today where he met with Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp and a crowd of Blue Origin employees.

Jared says:

Quote:We go where we need to be, and today that was NASAKennedy
.
Some of my senior engineers and I spent time at Blue Origin with Jeff Bezos and Dave Limp, speaking with the workforce and seeing the damage at LC-36 firsthand. I appreciated the opportunity to hear directly from those working through the aftermath and better understand the challenges ahead.

There is a lot of work to do, but this is exactly why people choose careers in aerospace, whether at NASA, Blue Origin, or across the industry. The talent in this field thrives under pressure and performs at its best when solving the toughest problems.

We have been saying for months at NASA that we are not going to sit on our hands and wait for the capabilities necessary to achieve the nation’s most pressing objectives. We are going to take an active role alongside our partners, just as we did in the 1960s, to overcome setbacks, remove obstacles, and deliver the intended outcomes.

NASA is committed to helping the Blue team recover, continue to advance their lunar lander and get New Glenn back to launching as soon as safely possible.

America’s greatest achievements in space were never the result of avoiding setbacks. They came from overcoming them. We have done it before, and we will do it again.

https://x.com/NASAAdmin/status/2060523381699612973

Nasaspaceflight.com made this video combining views of the explosion from their various Cape Canaveral cameras plus some subsequent helicopter flyover views.

Dave Limp (Blue Origin CEO) says,

Quote:Some LC-36 updates. Now that we’ve had access to the pad and integration facility we can share a bit of good news. The propellant farm, oxygen, liquid hydrogen and LNG tanks are all in good shape. This is good luck because these are very long lead items. The water tower is also good. The big support tower is damaged, but it can be repaired in place rather than torn down and replaced. The booster “Never Tell Me The Odds” and the three GS-2s that were onsite in the integration facility also look good.

I’ve seen some speculation that we might move directly to the 9x4 configuration, but we won’t do that. Rate manufacturing of 7x2 is going well, and we’re going to continue that at pace as planned and store the stages for use. In addition, we had already been working for some time on eliminating our transporter-erector in favor of an alternative vertical conop, and we’ll now go directly to that; so we don’t need a new transporter-erector.

We will fly again before the end of this year. Gradatim Ferociter.

(Jun 2, 2026 08:58 AM)Yazata Wrote: [ -> ]Dave Limp (Blue Origin CEO) says [...] Now that we’ve had access to the pad and integration facility we can share a bit of good news. [...] We will fly again before the end of this year. Gradatim Ferociter.

Despite the rivalry taboo, still sounds a bit like he's recruiting "Elon time" and "Elon optimism".

Blue Origin update from Nasaspaceflight.com