Blue Origin Rocket Explodes During Unmanned Flight

Blue Origin, which won the race with SpaceX for commercial space travel and carried out the world’s first private commercial space flight, has been quietly testing its new rockets for the commercial space station they will set up in Earth orbit in recent months. In a test conducted today, however, things did not go well.

The New Shephard rocket of the company owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos exploded in midair and crashed to the ground right after the launch. In the statement made after the explosion, it was announced that no people were harmed.

Only stayed in the air for 1 minute

This rocket, which is a different model of the New Shephard rocket, which has been launched many times before, was to be launched into space due to an experiment to be held today. Immediately after this unmanned launch, the rocket exploded into a fireball in the air due to a failure in the thrusters after only 1 minute in the air. The capsule of the rocket, which carried passengers but was empty during the flight, left the rocket just before the explosion and landed in the desert.

Company officials said in a statement 1 hour after the explosion, “It seems that we encountered an anomaly during the flight. There was a problem with the thrusters, but the escape system was designed as intended.” He stated that the explosion was caused by the propellants.

Although the exploding rocket is only used for unmanned experiments, this rocket is almost identical to the New Shephard rocket that Jeff Bezos launched into space. The founder of Amazon has not yet made a statement about the incident.