Blue origin The Fresh Glenn rocket exploded Thursday evening during a sizzling fire test on the launch pad, lighting up the sky around the launch site in Cape Canaveral, Florida. In a post on X, Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos said all staff had been accounted for.
“It’s too early to know the root cause, but we’re already working to find it,” Bezos he wrote. “A very hard day, but we will rebuild everything that needs rebuilding and get back to flying. It’s worth it.”
What is the sizzling fire test?
The test in which the Blue Origin rocket – a 300-foot-tall vehicle and one of the largest ever built – explodes is called a sizzling fire test, or unchanging fire test. This is essentially a standard procedure performed on the engines of a rocket, spacecraft or prototype, in which the engines are ignited for a very miniature time and then turned off while the vehicle remains attached to the launch pad. The purpose of this test is to verify that the systems are functioning properly before the actual launch.
Blue Origin rocket
This would be the fourth mission of the Fresh Glenn rocket, which was to carry 48 satellites and was to become part of the Amazon Leo satellite internet network next week. “NASA is aware of an anomaly that occurred this evening at Launch Complex 36 involving Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in a statement. post on the
Isaacman went on to say that NASA will provide updates on any potential impacts to the Artemis and Moonbase missions as they become available; the agency has entered into agreements with Blue Origin and SpaceX on various aspects of its plans to return to the Moon.
This explosion represents the latest setback for Bezos’ company. On April 19, the rocket suffered a failure during its third flight, prompting an investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). During this mission, the rocket’s first stage successfully landed on a floating platform, but the upper, or second, stage failed to deliver its payload – AST SpaceMobile’s BlueBird 7 satellite – to a sheltered orbit. The investigation ended only on May 22.
This story originally appeared on WIRED Italy and was translated from Italian.