The rocket explosion, a contender for the largest in American history, marks a significant setback for Jeff Bezos and NASA.

Thursday night’s detonation of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket during a static-fire test produced a spectacular fireball over Florida, sending shards of the rocket flying far and wide, into the sea and across the coastal scrubland nearby.

During an evening test fire on May 28, 2026, a Blue Origin New Glenn rocket exploded, engulfing the launchpad in a massive fireball. The spectacular fire, caught on video, not only destroyed the rocket but also appears to have significantly damaged Blue Origin’s only launchpad at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

NASA nailed down some specifics for next year’s Artemis III mission, which will send four astronauts on low-Earth orbit to rendezvous with a pair of lunar landers from SpaceX and Blue Origin.

On Thursday evening, Blue Origin attempted to test fire its massive New Glenn rocket at its Florida launch site, but something went very wrong after engine ignition. The super heavy lift rocket exploded in spectacular and disastrous fashion.

Flying a helicopter on another planet might sound like pure science fiction, yet space history has already proved otherwise. When NASA’s Perseverance rover thundered to Mars aboard an Atlas V rocket on 30 July 2020, few imagined what its smallest ...