Blue Origin’s New Glenn explodes during engine-fire test

A Blue Origin New Glenn rocket exploded at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station during an engine-firing test Thursday night, shaking homes in Cape Canaveral and Cocoa Beach and briefly turning the sky orange. Blue Origin said no one was hurt and that the company

Thursday night at Cape Canaveral felt like a launch—until it didn’t.

A Blue Origin New Glenn rocket exploded on the launch pad during an engine-firing test. shaking nearby homes in Cape Canaveral and Cocoa Beach around 9 p.m. Residents watched from their neighborhoods and soon turned to social media as the sky briefly glowed orange. Launch Complex 36 sits in view from the beach. and the photos and videos that followed captured an image no one wants to see at the start of a flight campaign.

Blue Origin said the New Glenn exploded during an engine-firing test being conducted ahead of a satellite launch planned for next week. Cape Canaveral Space Force Station officials said no one was hurt.

“It’s too early to know the root cause but we’re already working to find it,” Jeff Bezos wrote on X. “Very rough day, but we’ll rebuild whatever needs rebuilding and get back to flying. It’s worth it.”

Emergency crews stayed on scene for more than an hour after the explosion.

Officials stressed there was no threat from fumes or other potential hazards. Space Force officials also said the explosion would not affect upcoming launches by other companies from other pads.

That matters because the launch calendar is crowded right now. United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket is due to blast off Friday night with a batch of Amazon Leo satellites—the same kind of satellites that New Glenn was supposed to carry into orbit next week.

The New Glenn had been grounded earlier in April after it left a satellite in the wrong orbit because of an engine failure. Thursday’s explosion came as the company presses forward with the rocket it wants to use for major missions, including lunar landers for NASA.

The New Glenn is designed to be the backbone for landers that will take astronauts to the lunar surface. Blue Origin has said it intends to fly lander missions as early as a prototype lunar lander flight test this fall.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman addressed the broader challenge in his own message on X: “Spaceflight is unforgiving. and developing new heavy-lift launch capability is extraordinarily difficult.” He promised to provide information on any impacts to the Artemis program. including the moon base he recently outlined.

The immediate pressure on Blue Origin isn’t only about the test that went wrong. Earlier this week, NASA awarded Blue Origin a contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars to launch a pair of moon buggies in the next few years as part of the Artemis program.

Even as emergency crews cleared the launch site, other companies were already preparing their own missions. Elon Musk—who has seen his share of rocket failures—offered his condolences to Blue Origin via X. “Sorry to see this, I hope you recover quickly,” he wrote.

New Glenn is a towering vehicle—321 feet (98 meters)—and it debuted in 2025. It is named after John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth. The rocket is positioned to be a step far beyond Blue Origin’s New Shepard vehicles that have carried tourists to the edges of space from Texas.

Blue Origin New Glenn engine-firing test Cape Canaveral Space Force Artemis NASA Amazon Leo Atlas V SpaceX John Glenn lunar lander