Blue Origin, the aerospace company owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, said that despite a massive explosion during a test last week, the company still plans to return its new generation heavy-lift rocket "New Glenn" to the launch pad by the end of 2026.
Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp said on June 1 that the overall damage to the Cape Canaveral launch site in Florida, where the accident occurred, was "better than expected" and that more parts of the launch pad infrastructure were in "good condition" than earlier assessments. He also revealed that a previously flown New Glenn first-stage booster and three upper stages parked at the launch complex were also in "good condition" during preliminary inspections. "We will be flying again before the end of the year," Limp said.
The explosion was one of the largest and most high-profile failures in Blue Origin's history. After the accident, many people in the industry originally expected that New Glenn would not be able to resume launches until 2027 at the earliest, especially considering that the company's only launch pad that could support New Glenn launches was damaged this time. However, Blue Origin has not disclosed any details about the cause of the explosion.
On a strategic level, Blue Origin is currently in a delicate position. In 2016, competitor SpaceX experienced an explosion of its Falcon 9 rocket on the launch pad, but it was able to quickly resume launches within a few months. One of the reasons was that a second launch pad was nearly completed and could take over operations. In contrast, Blue Origin's new second launch pad at Cape Canaveral is still in the early stages of construction and is not currently capable of handling the New Glenn mission.
NASA has high hopes for New Glenn and will include it in its plans for a series of upcoming Artemis lunar missions. In order to concentrate resources to support this deep space exploration project, Blue Origin announced in January this year that it would suspend the smaller "New Shepard" suborbital manned tourist flight for at least two years and fully shift its focus to moon-related launch missions around New Glenn.
New Glenn went through years of development and numerous delays before its first flight. The first launch of the rocket took place in January 2025. The upper stage successfully entered orbit in the first battle, but the first-stage booster exploded during its return to Earth. In the second launch in November of the same year, Blue Origin successfully sent two Mars exploration vehicles into space and recovered and landed the first-stage booster on an unmanned ship at sea for the first time. In April this year, Blue Origin reused this first-stage booster in its third mission, but a malfunction occurred in the upper stage, causing a satellite of its customer AST SpaceMobile to fail to enter the intended orbit, and the mission was ultimately judged to have failed.
According to reports, the explosion occurred on a rocket originally planned to carry out the fourth New Glenn mission. The mission was originally to launch a batch of satellites for Amazon, another company owned by Bezos, but these satellites had not yet been installed on the rocket and were not damaged in the accident.
Regarding the future configuration route of New Glenn, the outside world once speculated that Blue Origin might use this accident as an opportunity to jump directly to an upgraded version of New Glenn that is larger and has stronger thrust. In his latest statement, Limp rejected this idea and made it clear that the company will not directly move to a larger variant when it returns to flying. However, he revealed that Blue Origin will adjust the way the rocket is transported from the assembly plant to the launch pad and the process of erecting the rocket on the launch pad. The company previously used a "transporter-erector" that has both transport and pole functions, but Limp did not specify what specific design future alternatives would use.