Blue Origin Rocket Explodes During Test At Cape Canaveral Space Force Station

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-30

[00:00:00]Especially if you're a space fan, Cape Canaveral, an explosion followed by a fireball can't be good and it wasn't. It was a ground test of Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket. This rocket, it's not brand new to the fleet. In fact, Blue Origin has had success with this rocket, launching it a couple of times already.

[00:00:17]Former NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore, he joined us a couple of hours ago, talked about the setbacks that this can potentially cause for the program.

[00:00:26]>> Yeah, and and Fox Weather correspondent Katie Byrne has been following this story all morning. Katie, what's the latest? We know Jeff Bezos referred to this as a very rough day.

[00:00:38]Well, guys, we know that this explosion happened on the launch pad. So, we saw after the explosion this fireball shoot up in the sky over Florida's Space Coast. Some people described hearing the shock wave that came next and then smelling sulfur in the air. And new this morning, Blue Origin officials are warning that locals could see debris from this wash ashore for the coming days, if not weeks.

[00:01:04]>> Oh, man.

[00:01:06]>> Wow, that just lit up >> There's the shockwave.

[00:01:13]>> It happened right around 9:00 last night during a test at Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The mayor of Cape Canaveral, Wes Morrison, actually took his own video, sending that in and alerting the public to what was happening. Though, most people caught it with their own eyes. Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos says all personnel are safe. No one was on board.

[00:01:34]In a statement shared to X, the company said an anomaly occurred during a hot fire engine test. Bezos vowed the company would rebuild and continue flying.

[00:01:46]>> Now, we just heard a big like boom. Sky went orange. It was crazy. Like big explosion.

[00:01:52]>> The whole sky looked like fireballs in the sky. It was cool.

[00:01:58]>> Yeah, cool for some, scary for others, depending on how close you were to that fireball. But now the big question is what could that rebuild look like? Some experts think it could take more than a year. There's the launch pad they have to fix and then nearby infrastructure surrounding it that may have caught fire, too. You can actually see in some before and after videos that the explosion took down one of two lightning protection towers nearby. The last time we saw something like this was about a decade ago. The last major launch pad explosion was at this space station, that is, at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. It was a helium system failure that led to a SpaceX rocket explosion. And that took about 15 months to completely rebuild. So that could be an indication of what we're looking at here. But of course this is making big news, not only because of these crazy videos that we're seeing, but also because NASA just announced a multi-million dollar contract with Blue Origin. They're counting on them to help them with their future Artemis moon mission. So we'll have to see if this could delay some of that, guys.

[00:03:01]>> Two steps forward, one step back. There are setbacks and we have seen it. Rocket science is not easy. It's really tough.

[00:03:08]Actually Elon Musk is right >> Elon right saying that. Rockets are hard. Um and but there is a bril- so many brilliant minds coming together to work through these issues.

[00:03:18]>> And there is time is of the essence.

[00:03:20]Katie, as you know, a bit of a I won't call it a space race, but this competition to try to get back to the moon and and it it's all of our attentions. And we'll continue focusing on it, the successes and the anomalies or failures.

[00:03:33]Thank you, Katie. Appreciate it.