Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket exploded on a Florida launch pad on Thursday, May 29, as it was preparing for its fourth launch next week.

No personnel were harmed in the incident, the company said on social media, calling the explosion an ‘anomaly’

The destruction of Jeff Bezos's New Glenn rocket clouds NASA's lunar timeline and deepens reliance on SpaceX, as the U.S. races China to the moon.

Mirroring a scene straight out of Succession, Miami Palmetto Senior High grad Jeff Bezos watched his remote-controlled (reportedly) $100 million toy rocket explode into a mushroom cloud of biblical proportions at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral,

A Blue Origin New Glenn rocket explodes during a test in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on May 28, 2026. —@JConcilus—AP It was never going to be pretty if hundreds of thousands of gallons of highly flammable liquid oxygen,

The explosion occurred around 9:00 p.m. ET on May 28. Blue Origin was preparing a rocket set to carry 48 satellites for Amazon’s internet competitor to SpaceX’s Starlink, which is owned by Elon Musk, another billionaire who has spent a lot of money to make things blow up.

Blue Origin rocket explosion: What we know about blast in Cape Canaveral