Now do you see why we have apprehension about the SpaceX Starship launching just a few miles from us?
This photo was taken by a friend who lives on the beach approximately 6 miles from the launch pad. See footnote below.
Blue Origin’s New Glenn lit up the night when it exploded during a static fire test.
SITTING HERE IN MY HOME, I HEARD THE EXPLOSION. Moments later, a phone call from a neighbor who raced to the beach to see what had happened, suspecting something had exploded at the pad we had been looking at just hours ago from the beach.
Below, a view from the Port Canaveral webcam when New Glenn rocket explosion lighted up the night sky.
Here’s the story… Jeff Bezos and NASA’s Administrator Jared Isaacman must be beside themselves.
And this, just a few days after the Orlando Sentinel reported this.
Last week, the FAA cleared New Glenn to return to flight after accepting results and proposed corrective actions to avoid the problem that arose during the NG-3 mission, which saw its upper stage fail to put its payload into orbit.
Now, the FAA has placed the NG-4 mission on its Operations Plan Advisory, with the heavy-lift rocket cleared to launch as early as June 4 during a window that runs from 1:21-3:03 p.m.
The payload will be the first mission to add satellites to the Amazon Leo constellation. Formerly named Project Kuiper, Amazon has more than 100 rockets across four launch providers lined up to get thousands of the satellites to orbit.
It’s the first of 24 missions on New Glenn, which has the largest capacity of all the rockets tapped to carry up Amazon’s satellites. With a nosecone diameter of about 23 feet, it will launch 48 of the satellites.
So far, Amazon has had to rely on United Launch Alliance Atlas V rockets, which can fit at most 29 satellites, SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets, which fit 24, and Arianespace Ariane 6 rockets, which have flown up 32 at a time. Amazon also has dozens of launches on ULA’s new Vulcan rocket under contract, but ULA continues to try and solve an issue with its attached solid rocket boosters before Vulcan flies again.
But with New Glenn’s recent launch woes getting the pass from the FAA, Amazon can now begin reliance on Blue Origin to begin fulfilling its contracts.
New Glenn first launched in January 2025, designed to mimic the rocket reusability of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 with the first stage attempting to be recovered on a vessel stationed downrange in the Atlantic. While the first flight made it to orbit, which had never been done on a commercial rocket’s first flight, the booster “So You’re Telling Me There’s A Chance” did not stick the landing.
The second mission in November 2025, though, was able to see the booster back safely onto the recovery vessel. That booster “Never Tell Me The Odds” was given seven new BE-4 engines and was able to return to flight on April’s NG-3 mission this year, once again sticking the landing.
A third first-stage New Glenn booster named “No, It’s Necessary,” a reference to dialogue from the film “Interstellar”, is the booster lined up for the NG-4 mission.
The company’s investigation into the upper stage issue from the April flight said that one of its two BE-3U engines had suffered a cryogenic leak that froze a hydraulic line. That led to a thrust anomaly during the engine burn of the upper stage, which ultimately meant the payload, the BlueBird 7 satellite for Midland, Texas-based AST SpaceMobile, did not make it to the proper orbit and was destroyed re-entering Earth’s atmosphere.
“There were no public injuries or public property damage,” the FAA stated after closing the investigation. “Blue Origin identified nine corrective actions to prevent reoccurrence of the event. The FAA will verify that Blue Origin implements corrective actions prior to the launch of the next New Glenn mission.”
Blue Origin is also seeking to get New Glenn certified for national security missions. The company opted to take a four-flight approach to certification, and the completion of NG-4 could line up the rocket to begin getting lucrative task orders under the National Security Space Launch Phase 3 contract alongside ULA and SpaceX.
FOOTNOTE:
Approximately 6 miles (straight-line / “as the crow flies”).LC-36 (now used for Blue Origin’s New Glenn) is located at the southern part of Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, with coordinates around 28.4706°N, 80.5400°W (Pad 36 area; slight variations like 28.472°N, 80.538°W are noted for the active pad). The north end of Ridgewood Avenue in Cape Canaveral (near ~8700 Ridgewood Ave / Ocean Oaks / Cherie Down Park area) is at roughly 28.398°N, 80.596°W. Using the haversine formula, the straight-line distance is ~6.0–6.1 miles. This is significantly closer than to LC-39 (~14.5 miles), as LC-36 sits farther south on the Cape proper.
- Road distance would be longer (likely 8–10+ miles) due to routing around waterways and base access restrictions.
- For context, public launch viewing spots like Jetty Park are ~5.7 miles from LC-36, and areas near the north end of Ridgewood / northern Cape Canaveral beaches align with ~6–8 mile ranges for this pad.
Distances can vary slightly depending on the exact point within LC-36 (36A vs. 36B) or the precise northernmost point on Ridgewood Ave. Straight-line is the standard metric for launch viewing, sound, etc.
