The engine test was conducted ahead of a satellite launch scheduled for next week. But New Glenn is also intended to be used to launch landers for lunar missions at a later stage.
The rocket is thus Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' competitor to Elon Musk and SpaceX's Starship project. The idea is that these large rockets will be able to carry heavier and larger payloads into space than before.
However, both rockets have suffered numerous setbacks, including several explosions, during the development phase.
“Difficult day”
“A very difficult day,” Bezos wrote on X, but he also promised to continue the effort. He stressed that the explosion did not cause any injuries. “It is too early to know the root cause, but we are already working to find it.”
"I'm sad to see this, hope you recover quickly," Musk wrote.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman also quickly expressed regret about the incident. Space travel is an “unforgiving” industry, he wrote, “and developing new launch capacity for heavy cargo is extraordinarily difficult.”
He promised that NASA "will work with our partners to support an in-depth investigation of this error and assess the short-term impact on launches."
Moon base in two years
According to Isaacman, it is too early to assess how the ambitious US lunar program will be affected. “We will present information on the impact on Artemis and the lunar base program when it is available.”
Both SpaceX and Blue Origin's rockets play important roles in the United States' so-called Artemis expeditions with the goal of starting to build a base on the Moon within two years.
New Glenn is named after astronaut John Glenn (1921–2016), and is 98 meters tall. Starship is a few notches larger, at 121 meters, and will be able to carry at least three times as much cargo.
