A Blue Origin New Glenn spaceship has exploded, disappearing in a massive ball of fire during a test on Thursday night. Fortunately, no injuries have been reported, but it's an expensive setback for Jeff Bezos' space company.
The New Glenn rocket had been undergoing a static hot-fire test at Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at the time of the explosion. A static hot-fire test is a trial run of the rocket's launch system, involving fuelling up the vehicle and briefly firing all its engines without disengaging the launch mount.
Unfortunately, this trial didn't go as planned. At approximately 9 p.m. ET the rocket "experienced an anomaly," which is Blue Origin-speak for "rapid unscheduled disassembly," which is SpaceX-speak for "exploded in a giant fireball." SpaceX suffered a similar accident last June, when its Starship spacecraft also exploded during a static fire test.
One first stage New Glenn rocket reportedly costs over $100 million to build.
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The explosion was caught on camera by Spaceflight Now and NASA Spaceflight.
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"We experienced an anomaly during today's hotfire test," the official Blue Origin X account posted shortly after the explosion. "All personnel have been accounted for. We will provide updates as we learn more."
Bezos reiterated that all personnel were safe in a post from his personal X account, and said that an investigation into the incident is now underway.
"It’s too early to know the root cause but we’re already working to find it," Bezos wrote. "Very rough day, but we’ll rebuild whatever needs rebuilding and get back to flying. It’s worth it."
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New Glenn is Blue Origin's attempt at building a reusable orbital rocket. On Wednesday, the company announced that New Glenn's fourth launch would place 48 Amazon Leo satellites into orbit, with further details to be revealed at a later date.