Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture has encountered two recent failures in its efforts to get orbital-class New Glenn rockets ready for future launches from Florida, Bloomberg News reported today.
For its first-ever launch, set for this fall, New Glenn is scheduled to send two small probes to Mars, to study the Red Planet’s magnetosphere for NASA’s Escapade mission. Citing unnamed sources, Bloomberg said the failures damaged rocket hardware for the two launches that are due to come afterward.
No injuries were reported in either incident, according to Bloomberg. One incident was said to involve the crumpling of a section of a New Glenn rocket that was destined for the second launch, in part due to worker error. The other incident reportedly involved an upper rocket portion for the third scheduled launch that failed during stress testing, resulting in an explosion.
A Blue Origin spokesperson told me that the company continues to be on track to start launching New Glenn this year, and that all flight hardware is complete.
