New Glenn forced an explosive rewrite for NASAs plans to build a moon base
NASA unveiled plans in March to develop a lunar base as part of its "Ignition" event that outlined the agency's new direction in human spaceflight. The plans, though, were rather notional: a three-phase effort to set up a base in the south polar region of the moon spanning more than a decade and costing more than $30 billion. There were few specifics about missions, including who would launch what and when.
NASA began filling in those details at a May 26 briefing at NASA Headquarters. The agency selected Astrolab and Lunar Outpost to develop lunar rovers, smaller versions of the concepts those companies, along with Intuitive Machines, proposed to NASA last year in the Lunar Terrain Vehicle (LTV) program.
Those rovers would be delivered on separate Blue Moon Mark 1 landers in 2028 under a Commercial Lunar Payload Services task order. NASA also selected Firefly Aerospace to transport to the moon several MoonFall drone-like spacecraft, which will hop across the lunar surface scouting potential sites for a lunar base. The contracts had a combined value of nearly $1 billion.
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"America is returning to the moon," NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced. "We are working alongside our many international and commercial partners to leverage the incredible capabilities from [the] commercial industry to build a moon base."
NASA did not discuss why it selected the companies for these missions. It was, though, a big win for both Astrolab and Lunar Outpost, startups that bet their futures on winning LTV awards. It was also a major setback for Intuitive Machines, which won neither an LTV contract nor a lander mission.
However, perhaps the biggest winner was Blue Origin. Less than two years ago, NASA decided to fly a payload on the first Blue Moon Mark 1 lander, which Blue Origin was developing on its own; NASA rechristened that mission "Moon Base 1" at the event. Now the company has four NASA missions for the lander, counting the two LTV missions and a separate award last September for NASA's VIPER rover, scheduled to launch in 2027.
The contracts give Blue Origin critical experience in landing on the moon that would transfer to the larger Mark 2 lander it is developing for crewed missions, potentially giving the company an edge over SpaceX's Starship. At the briefing, NASA did not discuss plans for human landings. But the agency said just after the lunar base event that it will announce the crew for Artemis 3 - the 2027 mission intended to test both Blue Moon Mark 2 and Starship in low Earth orbit - on June 9.
NASA at least had an initial plan for its moon base - until it blew up barely 48 hours later.
By selecting Blue Moon, NASA was also betting on Blue Origin's New Glenn. The rocket has flown only three times and, on its latest mission in April, an upper stage malfunction stranded its payload, an AST SpaceMobile satellite, into a low orbit. However, the company worked quickly to resolve the problem, and the FAA announced May 22 it would allow New Glenn launches to resume, starting with one for the Amazon Leo broadband constellation in early June.
But on the evening of May 28, as Blue Origin conducted a static-fire test of the New Glenn first stage for that Amazon mission, disaster struck. The rocket exploded moments after its seven BE-4 engines ignited, creating a massive fireball that enveloped the pad and lit up skies hundreds of kilometers away.
No one was injured in the blast, but images the next day showed significant damage to Cape Canaveral's Launch Complex 36. One lightning tower was destroyed, along with the transporter-erector used to bring the rocket to the pad. The main tower at the pad was still standing but damaged, with metal beams bent by the force of the explosion.
"We have regained some access to Launch Complex 36 and are actively investigating the hotfire anomaly," Dave Limp, chief executive of Blue Origin, said in a May 30 statement. "We will start clearing the pad soon and have a good rebuild plan in place."
He did not disclose details of that effort, but investigating the explosion and repairing the pad will take New Glenn out of service for many months. When a Falcon 9 exploded at Space Launch Complex 40 in September 2016 during preparations for a static-fire test, it took SpaceX 15 months to rebuild the pad.
If New Glenn is out of service for a year or so, as many in industry speculate, it upends NASA's lunar base plans. Moon Base 1 would slip to some time in 2027, pushing back both the VIPER mission and the two LTV rover deliveries.
One alternative would be to launch Blue Moon Mark 1 on either ULA's Vulcan or SpaceX's Falcon Heavy, but both options would require significant work to accommodate the different launch environments for those rockets. The companies would also need to modify their launch pads to be able to fuel the lander shortly before liftoff with liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen - a particular problem for SpaceX, which does not use liquid hydrogen for its vehicles.
It also raises questions about Artemis 3, which Isaacman said at the May 26 event was still planned for mid-2027 after suggestions it might slip to later in the year. If New Glenn is out of service for a year or more, NASA may need to decide whether to delay Artemis 3, and thus push the Artemis 4 crewed landing attempt to later in 2028, or fly the mission with only Starship if that lander is ready.
Isaacman said after the accident that the agency would take a hands-on approach to get New Glenn flying again. "NASA is committed to helping the Blue team recover, continue to advance their lunar lander and get New Glenn back to launching as soon as safely possible," he said on social media May 29 after visiting the launch site and meeting with company employees.
Even before the explosion, he vowed NASA would be more proactive in its lunar plans. "NASA is not a procurement organization," he said at the May 26 event. "We will not sit on our hands and wait for industry to deliver."
That means not just helping Blue Origin but also rewriting a lunar base development plan it had just finished. It probably won't be the last time those plans need to be revised.
This article first appeared in the June 2026 issue of SpaceNews Magazine with the title "Up in smoke."
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