Blue Origin Plans to Relaunch New Glenn After Explosion This Year

In light of last week’s major explosion, Blue Origin is targeting a 2026 launch for its New Glenn rocket, as per CEO Dave Limp.

Limp stated on Monday that the launchpad’s infrastructure is more intact than originally thought following the explosion during testing at the firm’s Cape Canaveral, Florida location. He also noted that another previously flown New Glenn booster and three of its upper stages “appear to be in good condition.”

“We will launch again before this year concludes,” he remarked.

This timeline is ambitious, particularly considering this incident marks the largest failure in the company’s history. Many in the aerospace field believed that it would take until at least 2027 for New Glenn to be operational again, especially given the significant damage to the launchpad—the only one equipped to support New Glenn.

Blue Origin has not yet revealed the reason behind the explosion.

The company now occupies a unique strategic position. SpaceX managed to recover swiftly after a Falcon 9 rocket experienced an explosion on the launchpad in 2016, aided by having a second pad nearly ready at that time. In contrast, while Blue Origin is working on a second launchpad at Cape Canaveral, that project remains in very early stages.

NASA relies on Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket for its forthcoming Artemis missions to the moon. Jeff Bezos’ space venture has completely shifted its focus to support these missions, announcing in January that it will pause space tourism flights on its smaller New Shepard rocket for at least two years.

The inaugural New Glenn launch took place in January 2025, following years of development and delays. That first mission was largely successful, with the upper stage achieving orbit on its initial attempt, although the booster stage exploded during its descent back to Earth. The subsequent New Glenn launch in November successfully deployed a pair of Mars-bound spacecraft and landed its first booster stage on a drone ship. This booster was reused in April for the third mission, although the upper stage failed, leading to the loss of a customer payload—a satellite for AST SpaceMobile.

For its fourth launch, Blue Origin was set to deploy a batch of satellites for Bezos’ other enterprise, Amazon. Fortunately, those satellites had not yet been loaded, thus avoiding destruction in the explosion.

While there was some speculation that Blue Origin might leap directly to a larger, more powerful variant of New Glenn for its return to flight, Limp dismissed that idea on Monday. However, the company will change its methods for transporting and erecting rockets at the launchpad. Previously, Blue Origin employed a “transporter-erector” that handled both tasks. Limp did not provide details on what the new approach would involve.