Mankind’s return to the Moon could have gone up in smoke with Jeff Bezos’s rocket
NASA is set to reschedule plans to put boots back on lunar surface for the first time since 1972 after Jeff Bezos’s New Glenn rocket blew up on the launch pad
Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket exploded
Mankind’s planned return to the Moon may have gone up in smoke with Jeff Bezos’s rocket. NASA chiefs are set to put back plans to put boots back on the lunar surface for the first time since 1972 following explosion.
A massive fireball engulfed the billionaire Bezos’s New Glenn craft on its launchpad at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, US, seconds into a ‘hotfire’ engine test on Thursday. The explosion could be seen 115 miles away.
But it was not just the £75m rocket that crashed and burned. It was the type of craft Bezos’s Blue Origin company plans to use to launch landers to the Moon for NASA – including those they hoped would allow astronauts to touch down on the lunar surface for the first time in six decades.
Just 48 hours before the blast the US space agency announced Bezos had won the contract to launch the first of three planned missions this year to begin construction of its £15bn Moon base. It is also in competition with Elon Musk’s SpaceX to provide a lunar lander for the Artemis IV mission planned for 2028 that would see astronauts set foot on the Moon again.
Bezos tweeted all his company’s employees were safe and unhurt in the explosion, 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.”
The company described it as ‘an anomaly’. But NASA administrator Jared Isaacman said on X a full evaluation of the Moon return timeline would be conducted after the explosion.
He wrote: “Spaceflight is unforgiving, and developing new heavy-lift launch capability is extraordinarily difficult. We will work with our partners to support a thorough investigation of this anomaly, assess near-term mission impacts, and get back to launching rockets.
“We will provide information on any impacts to the Artemis and Moon Base programs as it becomes available.”
Shockwaves from the blast were felt along the stretch of Florida’s Atlantic Ocean seaboard known as the space coast.
Residents of South Carolina hundreds of miles north reported seeing a glow in the sky. Homes shook in nearby Cape Canaveral and Cocoa Beach prompting locals to turn to social media to ask what happened.
Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Launch Complex 36 can be seen from the beach and photos of the fireball went viral. Emergency officials said there was no threat due to fumes or other potential hazards.
Flames were still burning at the launchpad more than two hours after the explosion. Blue Origin has endured a sequence of setbacks as it vies with SpaceX for NASA contracts for the Artemis program.
A payload from the third flight of New Glenn ended up in the wrong orbit during a flight last month and the rocket was temporarily grounded by the Federal Aviation Administration – aka FAA. Thursday’s was the first static fire test – in which the rocket remains on the launchpad – since the FAA cleared it to return to flight last week.
The FAA has not yet said if the blast will trigger another investigation.
Blue Origin and SpaceX have both built large new facilities in and around the Cape Canaveral space centre to support crewed and cargo missions in partnership with NASA. Artemis III – planned for 2027 – is scheduled to test Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lander and SpaceX’s Starship Human Landing System to determine which will ferry the Artemis IV crew from Orion capsule to the Moon’s surface.
Musk said of the explosion: “Most unfortunate. Rockets are hard.”
Bezos is also engaged in space tourism. Last April Blue Origin fired an all-female VIP crew into space including singer Katy Perry.
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