Blue Origin rocket explodes during test in Florida | BBC News

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:00]A Blue Origin rocket has exploded on the launchpad during a test in Florida. The 29story high New Glenn rocket was undergoing a static fire exercise at NASA's Kennedy Space Center to test its engines. Officials said they experienced what they called an anomaly during the test. It's a setback for the space company run by the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Greg McKenzie reports.

[00:00:26]These are the dramatic pictures of a Blue Origin rocket exploding during testing at Cape Canaveral in Florida.

[00:00:35]The blast happened in the early hours of this morning during what's known as a hot fire test when engines are fired on the launchpad ahead of a planned mission.

[00:00:48]Blue Origin, the space company founded by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, described the incident on X as an anomaly and says all personnel are accounted for and safe and that it was too early to know the root cause.

[00:01:06]The rocket was being prepared for a future satellite mission. But because Blue Origin is also involved in NASA's plans to return astronauts to the moon, investigators will now be looking closely at whether the explosion could have any impact on future lunar missions. Blue Origin has become one of the most highprofile names in the commercial space race. Earlier this year, singer Katy Perry was among the celebrities who flew aboard one of the company's space tourism flights.

[00:01:41]But despite the dramatic explosion, the company says safety procedures worked as intended and an investigation is now underway to establish exactly what went wrong. Greg McKenzie, BBC News. Blue Origins say they're investigating what exactly was the cause of this incident, which they describe, as we mentioned, as an anomaly. As Dr. Izzy Pearson, commission commissioning editor at BBC Science Focus magazine told me a little earlier.

[00:02:12]>> An anomaly basically at this stage just means that something has gone wrong and they don't know what it is. It's still very early days and these kinds of investigations can take a lot of time.

[00:02:21]There's a lot of parts, there's a lot of things that can go wrong on a rocket.

[00:02:25]Um, however, there's lots of sensors to they've tried to make sure that they know exactly what's going on in any part of the rocket at any given time. So, they have lots of information that they are undoubtedly at this very moment trying to troll through to to work out what exactly went wrong. Now, it's just a couple of days since NASA said it had chosen Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin um for the first unmanned uh lunar mission to start construction of the moon base that we heard about um more more about from NASA a little earlier this week. What sort of impact could this explosion have on that program?

[00:03:02]>> It does really depend on exactly what it is that went wrong. If it's something that's a fundamental flaw with the rocket, then that's a big problem because Blue Origins is planning on using the new Glenn to take these um rovers and and things to the moon. But it this is part of how how these space companies learn is they they when things go wrong, they analyze everything that happened, try and find out exactly what went wrong, and then improve and fix it.

[00:03:32]And how Blue Origins progresses from this point I think is going to really be under the eye of NASA particularly at this point in time.

[00:03:40]>> And we know that the US wants to have people back on the moon literally on the moon surface in 2028 and Blue Origin is competing with Elon Musk's Space X for much of the work around that isn't it?

[00:03:53]So I know you've used the term go fever.

[00:03:56]um how much does that competition between these commercial groups increase potentially um the risk of something like this anomaly happening?

[00:04:07]So go fever refers to this phenomenon where people are so concerned with making sure that things get out on time and everything's going well that they sometimes ignore small things that can have a big impact.

[00:04:20]>> Dr. Izzy Pearson. Well, just hours after the demise of that Blue Origin rocket, there was a more successful launch for Elon Musk's Space X. A Falcon 9 rocket took off from Cape Canaveral Space Force station, launching 29 satellites into space for another Starlink mission.

[00:04:38]Starlink's network can provide broadband internet to remote locations around the