Blue Origin plans to launch New Glenn again this year after explosion

Blue Origin is planning to fly its New Glenn rocket again in 2026 despite last week’s massive explosion, according to CEO Dave Limp. Limp said Monday that more of the launchpad’s infrastructure was in “good shape” than expected following the explosion, which happened during testing at the company’s site in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Limp also said that another previously flown New Glenn rocket booster that was at the launch complex, along with three of the rocket’s upper stages, “also look good.” “We will fly again before the end of this year,” he said. It’s an aggressive timeline for returning to flight after what was the largest and most visible failure of the company’s history. Many people in the space industry assumed it would take Blue Origin at least until 2027 before New Glenn would launch again, especially because it seemed like there was a lot of damage to the launchpad — the only one Blue Origin has at the moment that can support New Glenn. Blue Origin has also not yet said what caused the explosion. The company now finds itself in a unique strategic position. While SpaceX recovered in a matter of months after one of its Falcon 9 rockets blew up on a launchpad in 2016, that quick turnaround was due to the fact that it had a second pad nearly ready at the time of the mishap. Blue Origin is building a second launchpad at Cape Canaveral, but that project is in very early stages. NASA is relying on Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket for its planned series of Artemis missions to the moon. Jeff Bezos’ spaceflight company had completely shifted focus to this program in order to support those missions, announcing in January that it was pausing space tourism flights on the much smaller New Shepard rocket for at least two years. New Glenn’s first launch took place in January 2025, after spending many years in development — and suffering a number of delays. That inaugural launch was largely successful, with the upper stage reaching orbit on its first attempt, but the booster stage exploded on its way back to Earth. The second New Glenn launch, in November, saw Blue Origin put a pair of Mars-bound spacecraft into space and land its first booster stage on a drone ship. The company flew that booster stage again in April on New Glenn’s third mission, but the upper stage suffered a failure and the customer payload — an AST SpaceMobile satellite — was lost. Blue Origin was preparing to launch a batch of satellites for Bezos’ other company, Amazon, on the fourth launch. The spaceflight company had not put those satellites on board yet, so they weren’t destroyed in the explosion. While there was some speculation that Blue Origin might proceed directly to the larger and more powerful New Glenn variant when it returned to flight, Limp shot down that idea on Monday. The company will, however, change how it carries its rockets to the launchpad, and how it stands them up. Previously, Blue Origin used what it called a “transporter-erector,” which could handle both tasks. Limp didn’t specify what Blue Origin’s new solution will look like. When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence. Sean O'Kane Sr. Reporter, Transportation Sean O’Kane is a reporter who has spent a decade covering the rapidly-evolving business and technology of the transportation industry, including Tesla and the many startups chasing Elon Musk. Most recently, he was a reporter at Bloomberg News where he helped break stories about some of the most notorious EV SPAC flops. He previously worked at The Verge, where he also covered consumer technology, hosted many short- and long-form videos, performed product and editorial photography, and once nearly passed out in a Red Bull Air Race plane. You can contact or verify outreach from Sean by emailing sean.okane@techcrunch.com or via encrypted message at okane.01 on Signal. June 18 Los Angeles Get an inside look at what it takes to scale and succeed from leaders at Mach Industries, Founders Fund, and Shinkei Systems. Through candid fireside chats and high-impact networking, you’ll walk away with valuable insights and new connections. Most Popular ‘What a joke’: GitHub Copilot’s new token-based billing spurs consternation among devs Lucas Ropek I put Google’s 24/7 AI assistant Gemini Spark to work, and it’s actually pretty useful Sarah Perez Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket explodes during testing in Florida Sean O'Kane Anthropic releases Opus 4.8 with new ‘dynamic workflow’ tool Russell Brandom Meta launches Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp subscriptions, with more to come, including AI plans Sarah Perez Tech CEOs are apparently suffering from AI psychosis Julie Bort DuckDuckGo installs are up 30% as users reject being ‘force-fed’ Google’s AI Search Rebecca Bellan --- **İlgili Kaynaklar:** İlgili SEO ve GEO eğitim platformu için [GEO eğitim](https://geoakademi.com) platformuna göz atabilirsiniz.