The space company Blue Origin continues production of its lunar spacecraft despite the explosion of the New Glenn rocket. According to the company’s management, the restoration of the destroyed launch pad has not slowed work on the vehicles for the Artemis program. Blue Origin has still not disclosed the causes of the May accident.
Mark 1 Spacecraft
Details of the production process were shared by John Couluris, Blue Origin’s senior vice president for lunar permanence, at the Spacetide conference in Tokyo, SpaceNews reports. According to him, production of the Mark 1 spacecraft is moving forward on several fronts at once. The first of them, named Endurance, was originally planned for launch this year, but after the explosion the date shifted to the first quarter of 2027. Testing has already been completed, and the spacecraft is now awaiting its departure to the Moon.
Another Mark 1 lander is being prepared for a flight with the robotic VIPER rover. It will search for water at the Moon’s south pole, and the mission is scheduled to launch in 2027. This mission has already had a complicated history. In July 2024, NASA canceled the project because of rising costs, and in September 2025 assigned its delivery to Blue Origin, replacing the original contractor, SpaceNews reports.
The company is preparing two more such landing platforms for another task. They will deliver lunar rovers to the Moon’s surface for astronaut mobility. These rovers are being developed by Astrolab and Lunar Outpost under a NASA order dated May 26, and the landers are expected to depart for the Moon in 2028.
Updated Artemis 3 Mission
Blue Origin is also building three Mark 2 spacecraft for future crewed flights. The first will be a prototype that will go to Earth orbit as early as 2027 as part of the updated Artemis 3 mission, where docking with the Orion spacecraft will be tested. It will have the same crew cabin as the future crewed modules, but without a full propulsion system.
The company calls two other spacecraft Mark 2 Alpha, and these are intended for actual crewed landings. First, one of them will carry out an uncrewed demonstration landing in 2028, and only after that will a flight with astronauts on board take place.
According to John Couluris, this module has now been optimized for new orbits agreed upon with NASA. This means a departure from the originally planned near-rectilinear halo orbit for rendezvous with the Gateway lunar station.
Restoration of the Launch Pad
As for the investigation into the causes of the explosion, it is moving faster than the company itself expected. Blue Origin planned to identify debris and assess the consequences in 29 days. Specialists completed the work in just 21 days. Fragments of all seven BE-4 first-stage engines and both BE-3U second-stage engines were recovered from the wreckage. The company also presented a new scheme for transporting the rocket to the pad that does not require restoration of the destroyed transporter-erector.
At the same time, Blue Origin abandoned the idea of restoring the tower of Launch Complex 36A in its previous location. Instead, crews have already begun dismantling the upper segments of the structure in order to install new cryogenic lines in parallel. According to the plan, the updated pad will become operational by the end of this year. A second launch complex, 36B, for the larger New Glenn 9×4 version has been under construction since last September and is expected to open in late 2027.
Despite the detailed report on the pace of recovery, the cause of the explosion itself remained unexplained. We have already written that more than a month after the accident, the company had not named even a preliminary version of what happened on the launch pad. In his new remarks, John Couluris likewise avoided this issue, focusing only on repair timelines and production plans.
Consequences for NASA
Several NASA programs depend on the restoration of the launch pad, including the delivery of the VIPER rover and the test flight to Earth orbit as part of the Artemis 3 mission. Both tasks are tied specifically to the Mark 1 and Mark 2 spacecraft, whose production the company is conducting in parallel with repairs to the launch complex.
This year, New Glenn has already suffered two accidents. The April failure during launch was caused by insufficient thrust from the second-stage engine, while the May explosion halted preparation of the rocket for its next flights.
