Blue Origin's 98-meter-tall New Glenn rocket exploded on its launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida, during a hotfire test on May 28, 2026. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11] The explosion produced a massive fireball and extensive damage to Space Launch Complex 36, destroying a lightning protection tower and severely impacting the pad. [3, 4, 5, 6, 10]
All personnel were accounted for with no injuries or missing staff reported. [1, 4, 12, 5, 6, 10, 11] Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos described the day as "very rough" but pledged to rebuild. He said, "All personnel have been accounted for. Very rough day, but we'll rebuild whatever needs rebuilding and get back to flying. It's worth it." [4] Bezos added it was "too early to know the root cause" of the explosion. [5]
The launch pad LC-36 is the only facility capable of launching the New Glenn rocket, meaning Blue Origin faces months of downtime until the pad is rebuilt and recertified. [4] This will delay the planned early June launch to deploy 48 Amazon Leo broadband satellites into low-Earth orbit. [3, 4, 5, 6, 7]
The explosion marks a setback for Blue Origin’s decade-long effort to compete against SpaceX’s Starship and Falcon 9 rockets in commercial and government missions. [2, 5, 6, 8, 11] NASA awarded Blue Origin a $468 million contract to deliver commercial lunar terrain vehicles and plans to fly lunar landers on New Glenn rockets between 2026 and 2028. [4, 7] NASA administrator Jared Isaacman said, "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." [7]
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk commented on the incident via social media, writing, "Most unfortunate. Rockets are hard." [5, 6, 7, 11] Blue Origin had recently resumed New Glenn launches following a previous failure involving the loss of an AST SpaceMobile satellite; this explosion occurred just weeks after the third successful flight. [11]
The company now faces the challenge of repairing or rebuilding Space Launch Complex 36. No new launch date has been announced as investigations into the cause continue.
