Blue Origin rocket explodes during test: What happened?

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:00]X35 News starts now with breaking news.

[00:00:03]>> A massive explosion at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station tonight. A viewer sent us this video of that blast on Launchpad 36. This happened about an hour ago. And right now, this is a live look of the fire that's still burning on the Space Coast tonight. Blue Origin just confirmed that this happened during a fire test. Thanks for joining us. I'm Lance Cell and I'm Marisa Goldmith. We are working very hard to find out more about what exactly happened tonight, but we want to go ahead and bring in Zach Aubbert, one of our space experts, to kind of give us a lay of the land and what we know right now. Hi there, Zach.

[00:00:41]>> Hi. Yeah, not the night Blue Blue Origin was hoping for here.

[00:00:44]>> No, not at all. Okay, so give us a rundown. What have you heard?

[00:00:48]>> Yeah, so tonight Blue Origin was planning at 900 p.m. Eastern to conduct a static fire test. This is a a normal test that they do in preparation for launch. Uh we've confirmed there was no payload on board. Uh this was going to be an Amazon LEO mission that was just set to launch in the coming weeks. Uh but unfortunately it looks like some sort of uh maybe ground support system had a failure and it just worked its way up the vehicle taking out the booster the second stage. Uh and ultimately also taking out the transporter erector, one of the lightning towers. Uh but first and foremost, Blue Origin has already said they've accounted all of their uh staff and employees. So that's that's the biggest thing. Everything else we can replace. Uh, but definitely not the way Blue Origin was hoping to end this week.

[00:01:27]>> Yeah, Zach, that's great news that no people were hurt. I mean, this explosion though is pretty incredible. It looks absolutely massive. What are we hearing about the damage? Was anything else damaged besides like the launch pad? I know there's a backup payload somewhere in a vehicle assembly building. What do you know about the extent of this?

[00:01:48]>> Yeah, so we're still waiting to hear things confirmed by Blue Origin. Um, from things that I've been hearing, it does look like the uh the hanger that you can see in that video in the kind of the foreground looks like it has survived. Uh, I'm sure there's probably some dent damage on the the side facing the pad, but it does look like the structure of itself has uh maintained.

[00:02:06]We do know one of the lightning towers has completely disappeared from the skyline. The second one you could see wobble quite dramatically during the explosion on some of the videos that are out there. Uh and then the the erector, the vehicle that actually takes the rocket out to the pad and turns it vertical, uh is is also just not able to be seen. NASA does have a helicopter in the air. Uh so they're looking obviously looking at maintaining the fire. This is a wildlife reserve uh on the Cape side, so they're wanting to maintain that, but also obviously investigate the damage and this of course will trigger a major investigation at Blue Origin and with the FAA.

[00:02:40]>> Absolutely. Obviously a very developing story here right now. But Zach, can we talk a little bit about the logistics of this? Explain to me what a static fire test is. To my understanding, it it's kind of like a dress rehearsal, if you will.

[00:02:53]>> Yeah, that's exactly what it is. So, we uh basically fuel it up as if you're going to launch. Uh you normally don't have your payload on board, uh but you just don't launch. So, you ignite your engines, maybe not to their full thrust capacity. Uh but in every other way, this is basically a launch simulation uh as if it was a launch day. Uh SpaceX does these Blue Origin, everyone does them. Uh and uh normally, you know, we see a little bit of a glow on the horizon if everything goes well. Uh and unfortunately now today, we're seeing the the outcomes of if something doesn't go. We've seen the same thing happen with Starship, unfortunately, a few times over the last couple years.

[00:03:26]>> Yeah, I was going to say, Zach, we saw the Starship explode on a launchpad in California. That took months for them to get everything rebuilt there. How long could it be before Blue Origin can get their launchpad back up and running?

[00:03:41]>> Yeah, so the big question is what caused this? And obviously they're going to be investigating that for uh the coming weeks or months. I know some other uh people space experts that have been kind of posting on social media is that this is could be anywhere from a 6 to 12 month delay of the New Glenn program, which is pretty hard. When just this week NASA announced all their moonbased plans for phase 1 and New Glenn was going to be a big part of that. Blue Origin was preparing to launch their MK1 lander for a test flight to the moon later this year. Um, so this is going to be a big impact to what the the next year of New Glenn is going to look like.

[00:04:13]>> So, Zach, tell us what would be the next step in this.

[00:04:18]>> Yeah, next step will be waiting for sunrise, getting their crews out there once they've maintained uh the fires saved it. Obviously, this was a fully fueled vehicle. That's why we got such a, you know, sad to say, incredible explosion. Um, but ultimately this was a fully fueled vehicle that's capable of carrying very large payloads up into space and to the moon. So, they'll want to get out to the pad, start a multi-day inspection of where actually everything is standing. Uh, and then they'll begin, you know, the rebuild plans on what that's going to take. Uh, but like you said, this is likely going to be a many month rebuild before we see another New Glenn out of the pad. And then the question is, what testing do we see of New Glenn before they attempt to have another flight uh of the the New Glenn booster? All right, Zack Aubbert, thank you so much for being with us tonight.

[00:05:01]We really appreciate your expertise.

[00:05:04]>> Thanks for having me. Uh, and good luck to Blue Origin.