Tag: Blue Origin

One month after a New Glenn rocket explosion damaged its Florida launch pad, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture has decided to shift its focus to a new concept for future launches.

“To return to flight this year, we’re not rebuilding the same pad,” Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp said in an online update. Instead, the company will move ahead with a plan that it already had been working on for Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Launch Complex 36.

The concept of operations, or ConOps in rocket lingo, calls for a hybrid horizontal/vertical configuration for launch preparations. Blue Origin had already planned to employ the hybrid system for a second pad that’s currently in development for its super-sized 9×4 New Glenn rocket. Now the system will be used for the old pad as well as the new one, “creating a common ConOps across two pads,” Limp said.

In a post to X, Limp said the plan “has the added benefit of increasing our flight cadence.”

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture aims to repair the damage done last week by a launch-pad rocket explosion and return to flight before the end of the year, the company’s CEO says.

In a post to X, CEO Dave Limp laid out a schedule that was more optimistic than what was expected immediately after the fiery destruction of a New Glenn rocket during a static-fire test on May 28. CNBC quoted NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman as saying that it would “take some serious time” to restore Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

In his post, Limp said he had “a bit of good news” to share after inspecting the pad and the complex’s integration facility.

“The propellant farm, oxygen, liquid hydrogen and LNG tanks are all in good shape,” he said. “This is good luck because these are very long lead items. The water tower is also good. The big support tower is damaged, but it can be repaired in place rather than torn down and replaced. The booster ‘Never Tell Me The Odds’ and the three GS-2s [upper stages] that were onsite in the integration facility also look good.”

Limp said the pad would be rebuilt to accommodate the current 7×2 New Glenn configuration, which offers a seven-engine first stage and a two-engine upper stage, rather than immediately transitioning to the next-generation configuration with nine engines on the first stage and four on the upper stage.

“Rate manufacturing of 7×2 is going well, and we’re going to continue that at pace as planned and store the stages for use,” he said. “In addition, we had already been working for some time on eliminating our transporter-erector in favor of an alternative vertical conop [concept of operations], and we’ll now go directly to that; so we don’t need a new transporter-erector.

“We will fly again before the end of the year,” Limp wrote. Then he signed off with Blue Origin’s motto, “Gradatim Ferociter,” which is Latin for “Step by Step, Ferociously.”

If New Glenn returns to flight this year, that would be relatively good news for NASA and Blue Origin’s other customers.

Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket exploded today during a hotfire test on its launch pad in Florida — dealing heavy damage to the pad, and dealing a heavy blow to Jeff Bezos’ space venture.

“All personnel are accounted for and safe,” Bezos said in a post to X. “It’s too early to know the root cause but we’re already working to find it. Very rough day, but we’ll rebuild whatever needs rebuilding and get back to flying. It’s worth it.”

The U.S. Space Force confirmed that there were no injuries or fatalities. “Range officials, in coordination with Blue Origin and appropriate partners, are currently evaluating available data to determine the exact cause of the anomaly,” it said in a Facebook post. In a follow-up post to X, the Space Force’s Space Launch Delta 45 cautioned that debris from the anomaly could wash ashore over the coming days or weeks.

The 322-foot-tall rocket, nicknamed “No, It’s Necessary” in a reference to the movie “Interstellar,” had been due to send 48 Amazon Leo satellites into orbit as soon as next week. The Federal Aviation Administration gave its go-ahead for launch last week after Blue Origin wrapped up an investigation of a launch failure that occurred in April.

In preparation for liftoff, the New Glenn rocket was brought out to Blue Origin’s pad at Space Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station for a static test firing of its booster engines. The satellites were not aboard the rocket for the test.

Video showed the rocket exploding in a huge fireball after the engines were lit up. “They just nuked the pad,” one observer could be heard saying in a video recorded by Spaceflight Now. Other views of the blast were captured by NASASpaceflight.com.

For more than a quarter-century, Jeff Bezos has been funding his Blue Origin space venture primarily with his gains from Amazon, the other big company he founded — but according to a report in the Financial Times, Blue Origin is now weighing a plan to seek outside investment for the first time.

The report says Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp told employees at a recent all-hands meeting that the company might have to turn to external fundraising if it went ahead with plans to increase its launch cadence significantly. The Financial Times attributed its report to two unidentified sources who attended the meeting. We’ve reached out to Blue Origin for comment and will update this report with anything we hear back. The company doesn’t typically comment on claims attributed to unidentified sources.

Blue Origin launched its heavy-lift New Glenn rocket for the first time in January 2025, and two more New Glenn missions have followed since then. The most recent launch took place last month but failed to put its payloads in their proper orbit. As a result, New Glenn is grounded until the company completes an investigation and takes corrective actions under the oversight of the Federal Aviation Administration.

Past reports have suggested that Blue Origin was targeting as many as 12 New Glenn launches this year, and as many as 100 launches per year in the longer term.