Blue Origin spacecraft explodes during test on launch pad Blue Origin expects to resume aircraft launches later this year, company CEO David Limp stated this Wednesday (17). The executive spoke at the VivaTech conference in Paris, alongside the company's founder, billionaire Jeff Bezos. According to Limp, the reconstruction of the launch pad site located in Florida has already begun.
The executive, however, did not provide further details or a completion date estimate. 🗒️ Have a reporting suggestion? Send it to g1 The statement comes after New Glenn, Blue Origin's spacecraft, exploded during a test at the launch base in May of this year. The explosion occurred around 10 PM while the space vehicle was undergoing a static fire test, where it does not lift off. The experiment focused on the future NG-4 mission.
The plan is for the spacecraft to send the first 48 Amazon Leo satellites into space, similar to those used by Elon Musk's Starlink. At the time, Musk lamented the spacecraft's explosion. SpaceX and Blue Origin are the leading companies in the commercial space race globally. On the social network X, also owned by Musk, the billionaire expressed regret over the incident and wished the competitor a quick recovery. Blue Origin has already conducted three test flights with the New Glenn, all unmanned.
The first took place in early 2025, when the spacecraft carried a prototype of another spaceship designed to deploy satellites in space. The second test took place in November 2025 and served to send probes designed to reach Mars in 2027. The trip was commissioned by NASA and marked the first commercial mission of Blue Origin's spacecraft. The third experiment was conducted in April 2026.
It was the first time the company reused a booster, a feat that heightened rivalry with SpaceX. Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and Blue Origin, and co-founder and co-CEO of Prometheus, participates in the 10th edition of the VivaTech tech startup and innovation fair in Paris, France, in June 2026. Abdul Saboor/Reuters Artificial intelligence was also a topic Bezos, in turn, stated during his speech that although he understands there is a concern that artificial intelligence (AI) will make humans "redundant," he does not believe in that scenario. “I know there is a lot of concern by many people, including many smart people, that AI is going to make human beings unnecessary and so on,” Bezos said. “I completely disagree with that point of view.
And I think, actually, AI is going to cause a labor shortage.” Half of Americans fear that the advancement of AI could leave them or a family member jobless, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released this month. Bezos, the world's fourth richest person with a net worth of about $250 billion (about R$ 1.3 trillion), argued that people have “infinite” things to do and are currently limited by barriers that, he said, AI would reduce. One of the goals of space exploration is to move polluting industries off Earth, said Bezos, whose Blue Origin aims to compete with trillionaire Elon Musk's SpaceX in the rocket sector. “If space travel becomes reliable and cheap enough, and we can get materials from asteroids, near-Earth objects, and the Moon, then this garden-planet can return to its pre-Industrial Revolution state,” Bezos said. Musk also presented an ambitious vision for space ahead of SpaceX's public offering last week, including plans to create cities on the Moon and Mars. In an interview with JP Morgan Chief Executive Jamie Dimon last week, he talked about launching AI data centers into space and vacationing on the Moon. *With information from the Reuters news agency.
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