While it was night in Italy, Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket exploded on the Cape Canaveral launch pad. It wasn’t a test: the rocket was supposed to carry 48 Leo satellites into orbit. Blue Origin is the space company founded by Jeff Bezos. At the moment no casualties have been reported among the staff.
The images will need to be analyzed for a long time. Space base of Cape CanaveralFlorida. The rocket New Glenn 1 of the company Blue Origin is about to leave the launch base. The explosion was recorded while in Italy it was night. Smoke can be seen starting to come out of the base of the rocket. Flames begin to appear. Within a few moments the whole rocket explodes on the launch pad. In contrast to the darkness of the night, the fireball envelops all the structures around and rises hundreds of meters high. Blue Origin is the space company founded by Jeff Bezos, currently the fourth richest man in the world according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index with an estimated wealth of 292 billion dollars. In recent years, Blue Origin has begun to compete with Elon Musk’s SpaceX. The project is similar: to make access to space cheaper by building rockets are first of all reusable.
The explosion did not cause any casualties. Jeff Bezos made it clear on X: “All staff are safe, no one is missing.” However, understanding the causes of the explosion is complex: “Too early to know the main cause but we are already working to identify it. It’s a very difficult day but we will rebuild what needs to be rebuilt and we will fly again.” Jared IsaacmanNASA Administrator, commented: “Spaceflight is unforgiving and developing new heavy-lift launch capabilities is difficult. We will work with our partners to support a thorough investigation into this anomaly. We will provide information on any impacts on the Artemis and Moon Base programs as soon as they are available.”
The Artemis program is NASA’s plan to bring Homo sapiens back to the Moon. We are talking about a substantial plan, distributed over different missions spread over the next few years. At the beginning of April with the Artemis II mission a crew reached the farthest point from Earth never touched by a human being: an itinerary of several days that has passed around our satellite and then return to Earth. Blue Origin participates in this program: specifically, it is dealing with the development of Blue Moonthe modules with which the next crews should land on the Moon.
Blue Origin takes on SpaceX: Starship’s rival lander to the Moon later this year
Blue Origin’s mission: satellite launch failure
The explosions, better clarify that, they are part of space exploration. Especially for this type of missions with reusable rockets: although it is certainly not a technology that we are seeing for the first time, there is still a lot to understand. This New Glenn 1 mission was not a test, however. It was an official mission that from what we have reconstructed was supposed to take it into orbit 48 Leo satellites to be placed in low orbit. Leo is an Amazon project: the goal is to build a network of satellites capable of providing low latency internet connection. Here too it is not difficult to spot the competitor: it is the same idea as Starlink baseSpaceX’s satellite network.
The Leo project officially started in 2019, it was originally called Project Kuiper. The rebranding only arrived last November. At the moment Amazon has obtained the permits to put it into orbit 3,236 satellites. Even when the constellation Leo will reach this figure we will be anyway very far from Starlinkat the moment the constellation of Elon Musk reaches 10,408 satellites already active in low orbit. Not only that: in addition to the presence of satellites, the company has long since begun to make agreements with customers and companies for its broadband satellite internet network. At the moment, as we have seen in Ukraine, in territories where there is a lack of infrastructure it is the simplest method to connect to the internet.
The space tourism market
After making a step back from the Amazon guideJeff Bezos began working more closely at Blue Origin. For now the company has distinguished itself in a still little explored sector of the space economy: the tourism. The rocket used for this program is called New Shepardis different from New Glenn 1 exploded in the last few hours. The maiden flight was made in 2021: among the crew members Jeff Bezos himself was present. The program of New Shepard involves much shorter journeys. The rocket takes off, slightly exceeds the Kármán line set at 100 km from the ground and then leaves the spacecraft with the crew on board. A few moments of micro-gravity and then we return to Earth.
Obviously there is little that is scientific and very promotional in this type of flights. In fact, even just for a few moments, those who participate in the launch of New Shepard he can call himself an astronaut. A tempting opportunity for creators and rich people looking for visibility. They also participated in these missions Katy Perry And Lauren Sanchezjournalist and wife of Jeff Bezos. Obviously, net of internal promotionstickets are on sale for these missions. According to various estimates we are talking at least $200,000 for a single trip. Everything lasts a few minutes.
