Last Thursday’s explosion of the New Glenn rocket, on its launch pad during a test, could hardly be worse news for America’s return to the Moon. Just two days earlier, NASA had unveiled its plans for a Moon Base, which relied heavily on Jeff Bezos’s rocket and his Blue Origin series of lunar landers. As investigators, safety and clean-up crews inspect the wreckage, NASA will be contemplating a major rethink. The options aren’t good.
Explosions on the pad are among the worst things that can happen because of how long repairs can take. If a rocket is to explode, engineers pray that it takes place in the air. Unfortunately, a problem with the New Glenn rocket’s first stage took place during a test run and resulted in its fuel, made of methane and liquid oxygen, igniting in one of the biggest fireballs ever seen. It seems like the damage to the pad is extensive – one of the huge lightning conductor towers has collapsed – but it’s the only pad from which New Glenn can launch. Others are under study, but it’s early days for them.
So New Glenn is grounded for the foreseeable future. It’s estimated that repairs will take well over a year and cost hundreds of millions of dollars. “Very rough day,” Bezos said, “but we’ll rebuild what needs rebuilding and get back to flying. It’s worth it.”
Everyone involved in rocketry knows that nothing is for certain. Failure is always an option, but this failure was particularly brutal. The New Glenn rocket performed quite well in its first three missions, and it was on the verge of commencing monthly flights for customers. Thankfully, the satellites it was supposed to place in orbit next week were not onboard at the time of the explosion. On its order book for the rest of the year were satellites for Amazon and NASA as well as others, all of which are on hold. It’s possible that some could switch to Blue Moon’s rival SpaceX, but not anything going to the Moon.
The problem is that one of the most important components for the return to the Moon – Bezos’s Blue Moon Mark 1 Lander, which was scheduled for launch later this year – can only fly on New Glenn. It’s designed to be able to deliver three tons of cargo to the Moon’s south pole, the site of the human landing and the Moon Base. It’s the workhorse of the lunar return – but it isn’t compatible with any other rocket. Its grounding will severely delay the first stages of the Moon Base and the human return. New Glenn was also awarded a $468 million contract to deliver two privately-built lunar rovers to the south pole in 2028. They must be in place before the astronauts arrive. I bet as they watched the fireball over Florida, NASA scientists had already begun working the new options.
The impact on next year’s Artemis 3 mission will be severe. It was to have been the human landing on the Moon, but more tests were needed. The new plan was for the crew to use the Orion capsule that flew around the Moon on Artemis 2 to stay in Earth orbit, practice docking with the Blue Moon Mark 1 and possibly with SpaceX’s Starship as well. Such rendezvous and docking are vital procedures for the return to the Moon.
Even before the New Glenn mishap, it was not guaranteed that Starship would be ready for Artemis 3. It still must achieve Earth orbit and demonstrate that it can be automatically refueled in space. Given its latest test flight last week was only partially successful, there is no guarantee it will be able to meet these milestones anytime soon. Now the Blue Moon Mark 1 probably won’t be available either.
What a difference one launch pad explosion can make. It means that the crewed lunar landing scheduled for 2028 now looks impossible. Over the past year or so, mission planners had come to favor the Blue Moon Lander to take the crew to the surface. It’s simpler and seen as less risky than the Starship. Now they face a difficult choice. Will Starship be ready for Artemis 3? Even if it is, do they wait for the Blue Moon Lander? If they can’t carry out Artemis 3 next year, what hope is there for a Moon landing in 2029?
All these problems are fixable, especially given Bezos’s considerable resources, but time is not on America’s side. Later this year China will debut its Mengzhou next-generation crew capsule and next year it’s anticipated to carry out a crewed lunar flyby mission like Artemis 2. With concurrent tests taking place with a two-person lunar lander called Lanyue, which means “embracing the Moon,” the race between the US and China for the next footprint on the Moon is getting increasingly hard to call.
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