Sound synchronized from @NASASpaceflight footage pic.twitter.com/EWr9t8iegP
— Scott Manley (@DJSnM) May 29, 2026
This, on a static fire, is a major setback for commercial space in general, and Blue Origin in particular. More anon.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Eric Berger has the latest.
It strikes me a that this may have been a demonstration of the recently discovered explosive potential of LOX/methane, which Dugway tests showed was equivalent to TNT.
Silver lining: The Space Force just got good data on methane exclusion zones.
— Eric Berger (@SciGuySpace) May 29, 2026
It’s a rough night for Jared Isaacman and NASA, too. More than one Artemis timeline was riding on New Glenn.
Yes. The biggest hit is probably to Artemis 3. This catastrophe all but assures Blue will be a no-show for that. There will also be delays of indeterminate magnitude to the delivery of the two just-contracted-for lunar rovers to the lunar South Pole base site – perhaps of sufficient extent so as to deprive the crew of Artemis 4 of any surface transport but shank’s mare when they arrive. Maybe this can be avoided by transporting one or both rovers to the lunar surface on the Artemis 4 HLS Starship lander instead.
It will be interesting to see what Blue does next. One hopes for balls-to-the-wall parallel efforts to both restore SLC-36A and complete the barely-begun build-out of SLC-36B. One also hopes to see an acceleration of development of the 9×4 version of New Glenn. This is where Blue gets to show what it’s made of.
One of the other knock-on effects of this major setback for Blue will be that even more weight for the success of Artemis will now fall on the shoulders of SpaceX. I think it is up to the task of handling that.
SpaceX will also certainly be called upon by Amazon for even more additional launches of LEO sats on Falcon 9 than the 10 already contracted for. Perhaps SpaceX will reconsider its intended less-than-record F9 launch pace for 2026.
When they stuck the landing, people were saying BO’s design/testing methods were better than SpaceX but this shows that some flaws wont be found until you try and fly something.
We aren’t conditioned to expect, or accept, a failure like this from BO but they have more launchers in their pipeline and a decent production rate.
May they find the problem and a solution and get back to flying as soon as the regulators allow.
The regulators are going to be the least of Blue’s problems for quite awhile. And Blue’s pipeline and production rate will matter naught absent a place from which to launch. Blue will be doing exceedingly well to have that back in-hand again sooner than a year hence.
If there’s a pool on what caused it, put me in for the concentrated hydrogen peroxide system that powers the four APUs that run the hydraulic system, which drives the landing legs and thrust vector control system. But that’s just a blind guess, based on the use of concentrated H2O2 and the bad history of H2O2, and that a static fire will include gimbaling tests.
I figure most people would instead lean towards an uncontained engine explosion. If that’s the case, this could also impact ULA’s Vulcan to some extent.
If you’re right, that’s bad news. If the engine explosion hypothesis proves true, that would be worse news for exactly the reason you cited. And that worse news would carry on beyond ULA to Amazon.
That doesn’t look like water that initially is ejected out the trench, but a fuel/air mixture that then ignites. I first thought it might have hit an ignition source from GSE, but now I see the fire begin closer to below the pad.
Eric Berger is the cynical sort that would fit in well as a commentator here.