Last night, the sky lit up over Florida’s Space Coast as Blue Origin’s big rocket — named New Glenn — exploded during an uncrewed static fire test at Launch Complex 36.
These tests are designed to test the rocket’s fuel system and motors by firing them when the rocket is clamped down to the launchpad. Thankfully, it seems that no one was hurt.
The company has launched New Glenn three times, during each of which the first stage performed well. The company had already demonstrated the ability to land the New Glenn first stage, and impressively reused it in April for the first time.
During that third flight, carrying the Blue Bird 7 satellite, an upper stage issue caused the mission to fail. However the company responded rapidly to the in-flight failure and returned to the launch pad in less than two months this week. The first stage for this mission, nicknamed No, It’s Necessary, was making its debut launch.
Prior to this launch attempt Blue Origin had in its inventory two first stages and about six New Glenn upper stages completed, and it was poised to break into a monthly launch cadence. By all accounts, the rocket was viewed as a major success for a company which, for so long, had seemed to plod along. New Glenn’s success catapulted the company to the upper echelon of spaceflight enterprises in the world. That Blue Origin was on the precipice of accelerating further makes this setback all the more painful.
It’ll take some time to learn what happened to this New Glenn rocket, but the impact of its failure may be wide-reaching.
This is a potential setback to NASA, which just this week announced Blue Origin will play a strategic role in its every-changing plans for a lunar return.
This is also a potential setback for United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket, which uses the same BE-4 engines that may be at the center of last night’s disaster.