A towering New Glenn rocket from Jeff Bezos-owned Blue Origin erupted into flames during a test on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida, an incident the company said caused no injuries.
“We experienced an anomaly during today’s hotfire test,” Blue Origin said in a short statement posted to X.
The company said “all personnel have been accounted for.”
Footage of the mishap showed smoke billowing from beneath the 98m-tall rocket before the vehicle ignited, exploding into a large fireball.
The blast marks another blow for Blue Origin, which has positioned New Glenn as the centrepiece of its push deeper into space.
“It’s too early to know the root cause, but we’re already working to find it,” Mr Bezos wrote on X soon after the explosion.
“Very rough day, but we’ll rebuild whatever needs rebuilding and get back to flying. It’s worth it,” he added.
Elon Musk, whose SpaceX competes with Blue Origin, described the incident as “most unfortunate”.
Florida congressman Mike Haridopolos, whose district includes Cape Canaveral, said he had contacted NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman following the explosion.
“I am grateful there were no reported injuries and thankful for the first responders, engineers, and launch crews who acted quickly,” Mr Haridopolos said.
Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket seen returning to Port Canaveral in 2023
Blue Origin has also been working with NASA on a lunar lander tied to the agency’s Artemis moon missions.
Mr Isaacman said NASA was aware of the explosion.
“Spaceflight is unforgiving and developing new heavy-lift launch capability is extraordinarily difficult,” he wrote on X.
“We will work with our partners to support a thorough investigation of this anomaly, assess near-term mission impacts, and get back to launching rockets,” he added.
The launch-pad failure follows an earlier setback last month, when New Glenn fell short of placing a communications satellite into the correct orbit, triggering an investigation.
In that uncrewed flight, Blue Origin managed to reuse and recover a booster for the New Glenn rocket, but the satellite for AST SpaceMobile did not reach its intended orbit.
After that mission, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said it required Blue Origin to conduct a “mishap investigation”, which was completed earlier this month.
“The FAA has approved our NG-3 report and corrective measures have been implemented,” Blue Origin said on 22 May, saying thermal conditions kept one of the rocket’s engines from reaching full thrust and caused the vehicle to miss its target orbit.
