NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said Monday at the CNBC CEO Council Summit that repairing the launch pad severely damaged last week by the explosion of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket „will take a considerable amount of time,“ adding that 2028 is „not out of the question.“ On May 28, Blue Origin, owned by Jeff Bezos, conducted a static fire test of the fourth New Glenn at Launch Complex 36 (LC-36) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, when the rocket exploded in a massive fireball visible for hundreds of miles. Subsequent footage shows the launch arm support used to transport and erect the rocket was completely destroyed; at least one lightning tower is no longer visible, and multiple fires continued to burn at the site. Bezos posted that night confirming everyone was safe and said they would „rebuild whatever needs to be rebuilt.“
Isaacman, Bezos, and Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp toured the site on May 29. Limp said on X the next day that the company had regained partial access to the launch pad and had formulated a rebuild plan, claiming they will „fly again by the end of the year“ — a clear discrepancy with NASA’s 2028 assessment. Isaacman noted that sending the Blue Moon lander to the moon requires a heavy-lift rocket, which may force NASA to move into „Falcon Heavy territory“: „In the heavy-lift arena, the only really big rockets are now provided by SpaceX and Blue Origin, and one of those companies’ launch pads is currently out of service.“ The accident has major implications for NASA’s Artemis program: the agency has selected Blue Origin to launch the Blue Moon Mark 1 unmanned lander on New Glenn later this year, and to carry out a lunar base mission this fall from the same pad; Amazon’s Project Kuiper broadband satellite constellation originally planned to launch 48 Leo satellites on New Glenn — all these plans now face significant uncertainty. Blue Origin is building a second launch pad (SLC-14) at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, but it will take time to become operational. For reference, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 launch pad explosion in 2016 required four months to determine the root cause and over a year to complete repairs.