KA-BOOM

Blue Origin Rocket Explodes in Mid-Air Minutes After Launch

There was no one onboard, and the main capsule managed to escape the destruction and land safely.

A Blue Origin launch went awry Monday morning on its way into space, when the New Shepard capsule’s abort system was triggered, causing the main space capsule to fire its thrusters and safely fly away from the rocket. This happened about 64 seconds after launch, when the rocket suddenly experienced a huge and unexpected plume of fire jutting out from the engine. The rocket was lost, though the capsule’s abort system performed perfectly, and pulled off a safe parachute landing in the West Texas desert. The mission was not carrying any passengers onboard—just scientific payloads. Blue Origin, founded by Jeff Bezos, has not yet released any details on the cause of the rocket booster’s failure. New Shepard will be grounded until an investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration is completed. It’s the New Shepard’s first major failure since the booster was lost during its debut flight on April 29, 2015. Since then, the company has flown New Shepard on 21 missions, including six crewed spaceflights.