On May 28, the space dreams of Jeff Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon who started his Blue Origin rocket company in 2000, went up in flames.
At the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, one of the company’s New Glenn rockets was on the launchpad, and its engines were undergoing a test in preparation for an upcoming launch. The rocket blew up, engulfing the launchpad in a fireball.
Last week, Dave Limp, the chief executive of Blue Origin, optimistically predicted that another New Glenn rocket could lift off by the end of the year from a repaired launchpad. But other experts expect that Blue Origin will be out of commission for at least a year.
That adds challenges to NASA’s Artemis return-to-the-moon program, which already has little margin of error for meeting a goal of landing astronauts on the moon by the end of 2028.
Blue Origin is one of two companies — Elon Musk’s SpaceX is the other — that NASA has hired to take astronauts from lunar orbit to the moon’s surface.
The plan for Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lander relies on multiple New Glenn launches to get that lander to the moon.
When Blue Origin won its $3.4 billion moon lander contract in 2023, NASA envisioned not needing the company until the third landing mission. The first two lunar landings were awarded two years earlier to SpaceX, which is adapting its giant Starship spacecraft.
But after cascading delays (and explosions), it has become increasingly likely that Starship is still years away from being ready.
Last October, Sean Duffy, then the acting NASA administrator, opened the possibility of switching to a different lander. “I’m in the process of opening that contract up,” Mr. Duffy said on “Fox & Friends” then. “I think we’ll see companies like Blue get involved and maybe others.”
At NASA’s request, both SpaceX and Blue Origin provided proposals for a simpler, faster approach for the first moon landing. Jared Isaacman, who became NASA administrator in December, reshuffled the Artemis plans in February. Instead of attempting a landing, the next Artemis mission, Artemis III, will now remain in orbit around Earth as a test flight. NASA officials hoped that the astronauts, piloting the Orion capsule, would be able to practice docking with the SpaceX and Blue Origin landers.
With its launchpad badly damaged, Blue Origin may not be able to participate in Artemis III or the moon landings that are to occur during Artemis IV and Artemis V.
Mr. Duffy never sought additional lander proposals from other companies. In an interview in January after he became NASA administrator, Mr. Isaacman said he thought it was unrealistic that another lander design could be put together in less than three years.
Lockheed Martin, which was preparing to submit a proposal, said it had continued work on a lunar lander design.
“In light of recent events, our assessments say this is the fastest way to return Americans to the surface of the moon and bring them home safely,” the company said in a statement last week. “Additionally, our lander concept could also be pre-positioned as a lunar surface rescue vehicle.”
The New Glenn explosions could also affect other parts of NASA’s moon plans.
Two weeks ago, NASA awarded Blue Origin a contract to take to the moon two rovers for astronauts to drive during Artemis IV and Artemis V. Those missions, using a smaller Blue Moon Mark 1 cargo-only lander, are scheduled to launch in 2028.
Blue Origin was planning to launch its first Mark 1 lander to the moon later this year to prove out technologies that would also be used for the larger astronaut-carrying lander.
That flight is now delayed indefinitely until Blue Origin can start launching the New Glenn rockets again.