{"id":475754,"date":"2026-06-13T19:12:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T19:12:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/475754\/"},"modified":"2026-06-13T19:12:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T19:12:13","slug":"jeff-bezoss-blue-origin-says-it-will-fly-again-this-year-after-explosion-nasa-needs-it-to-blue-origin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/475754\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeff Bezos\u2019s Blue Origin says it will fly again this year after explosion. Nasa needs it to | Blue Origin"},"content":{"rendered":"

As Blue Origin tells it, the most spectacular launchpad explosion<\/a> in recent memory, which destroyed its pioneering New Glenn space rocket last month and severely damaged almost everything around it, was merely a blip.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will fly again before the end of this year. Gradatim Ferociter,\u201d Dave Limp, the company\u2019s chief executive, posted<\/a> on X on 1 June, using the Latin form of its motto, \u201cStep by step, ferociously\u201d.<\/p>\n

John Couluris, Blue Origin\u2019s senior vice-president of lunar permanence, amplified the assertion at this week\u2019s Nasa event<\/a> in Houston, at which the crew for next year\u2019s Artemis III mission was announced.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs you know, we had a significant anomaly,\u201d he said. \u201cThe response from Nasa<\/a>, our partners and customers has been extraordinary. We\u2019re making excellent progress on the investigation and pad cleanup.\u201d<\/p>\n

Given the magnitude of the catastrophic fireball at Cape Canaveral space force station\u2019s launch complex 36A, an explosion visible more than 100 miles to the south, you would be forgiven for thinking Blue Origin\u2019s statements and recovery timeline were blindly optimistic.<\/p>\n

The disaster was seen immediately by analysts as a significant setback to Nasa\u2019s ambitious moon plans. Just two days earlier, Jared Isaacman, the agency\u2019s administrator, announced Blue Origin had won a contract<\/a> to launch the first of three construction missions planned for this year for the agency\u2019s ambitious $20bn moon base project. That flight appeared to be almost certainly doomed.<\/p>\n

But what has transpired since has been an all-hands effort to identify what went wrong and get New Glenn swiftly back to flight, a response unmatched in speed and intensity since the Columbia space shuttle tragedy of 2003.<\/p>\n

Isaacman, among the first to survey the wrecked pad<\/a>, promised a \u201cwhole government response\u201d to help Blue Origin, reflective of the importance of Jeff Bezos\u2019s company to Nasa\u2019s moon schedule.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody is responding quickly. Nasa is going to deploy subject matter experts to help with the investigation to get to the root cause of the problem [and] help them rebuild the pad,\u201d he said on Fox News<\/a> last week.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are doing everything we can to support Blue Origin, their New Glenn program, [and] the lander that we need for the lunar surface.\u201d<\/p>\n

As well as Nasa\u2019s support, Blue Origin enjoys Bezos\u2019s deep pockets, and will have the full resources of Space<\/a> Force available for the rebuild on its base, the military wing\u2019s chief of space operations, Gen Chance Saltzman, has said.<\/p>\n

The urgency is because of Artemis III, planned for late 2027, when the crewed lander referenced by Isaacman \u2013 Blue Moon \u2013 will be tested with SpaceX\u2019s Starship Human Landing System (HLS). The two are vying for selection for the scheduled 2028 mission of Artemis IV, when humans will return to the lunar surface for the first time since 1972.<\/p>\n

Blue Origin is designed to fly only on the New Glenn rocket, and Nasa faced the very real possibility that Artemis III, which was to have tested both landers in lower Earth orbit, would take place only with HLS and Starship, a configuration that has followed its own bumpy path<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Another possible scenario is reconfiguring Blue Moon to fly on a different rocket, such as SpaceX\u2019s Falcon Heavy. It is an option Nasa is reportedly<\/a> urging Blue Origin to pursue, but one that could create a further delay to the Artemis program.<\/p>\n

For that reason, Isaacman appears more eager to have New Glenn restored to flight. To keep options open, he told Fox, the agency was \u201cdecoupling\u201d Blue Moon from both the rocket and the launchpad.<\/p>\n

\u201cNasa is laser-focused on the lander, because we\u2019re laser-focused on our mission to return astronauts to the surface of the moon before 2028,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to be able to keep that lander in development, progressing, so it\u2019s available for our test mission in 2027, which is Artemis III, and potentially available to meet our landing objectives in 2028.\u201d<\/p>\n

The explosion, he said, was \u201ca setback that happens in this business\u201d.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cIt\u2019s incredibly complicated. A rocket is a controlled explosion. It\u2019s an awful lot of energy. Things will happen. We have to learn from it and be ready to move forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

Limp\u2019s tweet, meanwhile, and Couluris\u2019s subsequent comments, suggest that the launchpad damage is not as bad as first feared, and could be repaired sooner than originally thought.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe propellant farm, oxygen, liquid hydrogen and LNG [liquefied natural gas] tanks, are all in good shape,\u201d Limp said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Space experts say the pace of Blue Origin\u2019s recovery depends on how quickly it can figure out what went wrong.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t know what happened, and so we don\u2019t know what expertise is required to fix it, so I don\u2019t want to proclaim an obituary on Blue Origin,\u201d said John Logsdon, founder and former director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, and a former member of the Nasa advisory council.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are good people involved and the resources are available. I think we have to have a bit of patience.\u201d<\/p>\n

Logsdon said spaceflight\u2019s long, chequered history is punctuated by setbacks and delays ranging from minor technological inconveniences to launchpad explosions, and full-on, in-space disasters, including two space shuttle tragedies, Challenger in 1986 and Columbia in 2003, that saw 14 crew members lose their lives.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy reference point is past experience,\u201d he said. \u201cI remind you of the Apollo I fire<\/a> in January 1967 that killed three people, and we didn\u2019t stop, we fixed the problem and went on, and I think that\u2019s the most likely situation now in recovering from this accident.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s important to recognise that this is a setback. Mr Bezos says that they are going to spend the money required, whatever that amount is, to get back flying, and he certainly has enough money.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other experts say the company\u2019s return-to-flight timeline is more likely to be affected by ground logistics, especially if the launchpad damage turns out to be worse than initial assessments.<\/p>\n

\u201cBlue Origin should be able to identify the cause of the failure and get the rocket flying safely again. The challenge is finding somewhere to launch it from,\u201d Eric Berger, senior space editor for Ars Technica, wrote in an early analysis<\/a> of the explosion last week that called the timeline \u201caggressive\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As Blue Origin tells it, the most spectacular launchpad explosion in recent memory, which destroyed its pioneering New…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":475755,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[111,139,69,147,392],"class_list":["post-475754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=475754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475754\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/475755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=475754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=475754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=475754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}