Billionaire Jeff Bezos’s aerospace company Blue Origin suffered perhaps its biggest setback yet when the New Glenn rocket exploded during a static test fire at Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force station on May 29. The rocket was anchored to the ground when it happened at Launch Complex 36 (LC-36) which has suffered extensive damage as a result of the explosion.
In an update, Blue Origin said yesterday that engineers are “actively investigating the hotfire anomaly” which caused the explosion.
Blue Origin’s New Glenn just blew up at LC-36 while attempting to Static Fire ahead of NG-4.https://t.co/tANS0dWyIH pic.twitter.com/PztxFoBqIw
— NSF – NASASpaceflight.com (@NASASpaceflight) May 29, 2026
“We will start clearing the pad soon and have a good rebuild plan in place. The booster and GS2s in the integration facility appear healthy from quick looks,” the company stated.
Yesterday, NASA administrator Jared Isaacman along with Bezos took a tour of the launch complex to assess the damage that may have pushed America’s lunar program by several months.
We go where we need to be, and today that was @NASAKennedy.
Some of my senior engineers and I spent time at @blueorigin with @JeffBezos and @davill, speaking with the workforce and seeing the damage at LC-36 firsthand. I appreciated the opportunity to hear directly from those… pic.twitter.com/luurpxCPtP
— NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman (@NASAAdmin) May 30, 2026
“There is a lot of work to do, but this is exactly why people choose careers in aerospace, whether at NASA, Blue Origin, or across the industry. The talent in this field thrives under pressure and performs at its best when solving the toughest problems,” Issacman posted on X adding that NASA is “committed to helping the Blue team recover, continue to advance their lunar lander and get New Glenn back to launching as soon as safely possible.”
How Blue Origin’s setback will affect NASA
Blue Origin is currently sitting on a massive amount of funds from NASA (more than $4 billion) for tasks such as building landers that would take astronauts to the lunar surface. NASA’s Artemis Program hinges on human-rated spacecraft by Blue Origin and SpaceX that are busy building their Blue Moon and Starship landers, respectively.
The New Glenn rocket is supposed to be primary carrier of the Blue Moon landers, which could be used on the Artemis III mission next year.
Standing 320-foot-tall, New Glenn debuted last year and has flown three times, and only one mission has been a complete success. In its most recent flight, the rocket failed to deploy the BlueBird 7 communications satellite in the desired orbit, which forced the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to ground the vehicle briefly. It was preparing for the next mission carrying 49 satellites for Amazon’s broadband constellation on June 4 but the mishap at LC-36 has postponed it indefinitely.
Notably, the LC-36 pad was the only one that could host New Glenn launches, meaning it won’t fly for months unless another pad is configured for it. Experts estimate that it could take 12-15 months before LC-36 is ready again, and Artemis III is bound to get delayed beyond the planned timeline.
Artemis III will build up on the successes of Artemis II which launched in April. Earlier this year, it was changed from a Moon landing mission to an Earth orbit mission wherein NASA’s Orion spacecraft will test docking technology with Moon landers from either SpaceX or Blue Origin.
With New Glenn’s setback, SpaceX now has the edge to ready its Starship rocket for Artemis III. Although, this also eliminates a backup for NASA if SpaceX fails to deliver on time due to unforeseen circumstances.
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