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Kent-Based Blue Origin returning Florida Launch Complex 36 to 2 pads. * john stearns * aug 13, 2026 updated 13 hrs ago. Kent-based Blue Origin provided an update and renderings Wednesday on its launchpad work at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida following a May explosion of a New Glenn rocket during a hot-fire test at Launch Complex 36. Blue Origin is developing Launch Complex 36B to support New Glenn's 9x4 vehicle, a super-heavy class version of the rocket, and is constructing additional infrastructure nearby to support high-cadence launch operations and infrastructure resiliency for New Glenn. Launch Complex 36 has been a cornerstone of American spaceflight for decades, supporting missions for NASA and commercial partners, Blue Origin said in its news post. "Now, this historic site is entering a new era, furthering New Glenn operations," the company said. LC-36B will serve as the operational home for New Glenn 9x4, whose first stage booster will be powered by nine engines and its second stage by four engines. The second stage will carry 70 metric tons to low Earth orbit, 14 metric tons to geostationary orbit direct, and 20 metric tons to trans lunar injection, according to New Glenn's website, noting 9x4 supports demand for larger commercial mega-constellations, lunar, and deep space exploration, and national security missions. The 9x4 is nearly 400 feet tall and its fairing packs 29,000 cubic feet of volume, nearly 70% more than New Glenn's 7x2 configuration. LC-36A remains the operational home for the New Glenn 7x2 vehicle, whose first stage booster is powered by seven engines and its second stage by two engines. It can carry more than 13 metric tons to geostationary transfer orbit and 45 metric tons to low Earth orbit, according to Blue Origin's website. Blue Origin's additional infrastructure a Launch Complex 36 includes a new vertical integration facility for the 9x4 vehicle, and a payload processing facility. Built in partnership with the U.S. government, the payload processing facility will support both variants of New Glenn and national security space launch providers, Wednesday's post said.

Redwire books first commercial Starfall flight, X report 7 Aug 2026. Redwire's SpaceMD buys first commercial Starfall mission for late 2028, carrying 32 pharma experiment packages. Blue Origin pins New Glenn explosion on oxygen valve. Latest developments. SpaceX's Starfall reentry vehicle, which completed its first test flight in June, has landed its first commercial customer: Redwire's pharmaceutical subsidiary SpaceMD purchased a dedicated mission for late 2028 carrying up to 32 microgravity experiment packages. Separately, South Korea's Danuri lunar orbiter has photographed the impact crater left by a SpaceX upper stage on the Moon's surface. Meanwhile, Blue Origin's CEO has traced the cause of the New Glenn rocket explosion to an oxygen valve failure. Space safety. No Starlink satellites appear in the current SOCRATES top-probability conjunction list. Five Starlink satellites carry active reentry predictions, consistent with SpaceX's ongoing practice of deorbiting end-of-life vehicles through controlled or semi-controlled disposal burns. No upcoming Starlink conjunctions appear in the current SOCRATES top-probability list. | Satellite | NORAD ID | Predicted Decay | Window (min) | Inclination | Lat | Lon | | STARLINK-1994 | 47589 | Aug 7, 11:24 UTC | 180 | 53° | -3° | 25.6° | | STARLINK-2100 | 47380 | Aug 9, 06:25 UTC | 720 | 53° | 7.8° | 310.9° | | STARLINK-2342 | 47883 | Aug 9, 19:01 UTC | 900 | 53.1° | 31° | 17.7° | | STARLINK-2019 | 47641 | Aug 9, 23:54 UTC | 840 | 53° | -48.5° | 240.7° | | STARLINK-2163 | 47749 | Aug 10, 17:14 UTC | 1140 | 53.1° | 43.5° | 343.5° | Detailed coverage. Redwire books first commercial Starfall mission for pharma research. Space Microgravity Development (SpaceMD), a Redwire subsidiary, announced it has purchased a dedicated flight on SpaceX's Starfall reentry vehicle, scheduled for late 2028. The mission will carry up to 32 of Redwire's PIL-BOX experiment packages, redesigned to take advantage of Starfall's adjustable microgravity environment and mission duration. SpaceMD is the first established microgravity research company to commit to Starfall, which made its debut test flight in June. Redwire has already flown 54 PIL-BOX systems to the International Space Station since 2023, with 12 more launches planned this year. The company uses those systems to crystallize compounds for pharmaceutical research. SpaceX disclosed few details about Starfall before the June flight; much of what is publicly known came from an FAA environmental assessment published in May. Blue Origin pins New Glenn explosion on oxygen valve. Blue Origin's CEO has identified a liquid oxygen valve as the root cause of the New Glenn rocket explosion. The finding gives Blue Origin a specific hardware fix to pursue as it works toward returning New Glenn to flight. The explosion was one of the more dramatic failures in recent launch history, destroying the vehicle and its payload. Korean lunar orbiter photographs SpaceX rocket impact crater on the Moon. South Korea's Danuri orbiter has captured images of the crater left when a SpaceX upper stage struck the lunar surface. The photos provide a look at what happens when spent rocket hardware hits the Moon at orbital velocity, adding to a small but growing catalog of human-made lunar impact sites. As covered in today's Space Brief, the images were released alongside analysis of the crater's size and characteristics. Constellation status. No changes to the Starlink constellation since the last check on August 5. Current totals hold at 12,668 launched, 10,920 in orbit (10,904 working), and 1,748 decayed. * Total Launched: 12668 * Total On Orbit: 10920 * Total Working: 10904 Track Starlink satellites in real-time: Track Starlink B1049. B1049 is a retired Falcon 9 first stage booster who completed 10 successful orbital missions between 2018-2022. Known for exceptional fuel efficiency (4.72% above fleet average), B1049 has landed on both drone ships and landing zones, achieving a perfect touchdown record despite COMPLETELY UNRELIABLE weather predictions.

We May finally know why New Glenn exploded on the launch pad. After two months of quiet investigation, Blue Origin's CEO says his team has identified what turned New Glenn into a fireball - and the fix "will be ready by the end of this month." By Matthew Phelan Published August 6, 2026, 2:35 pm ET Reading time 3 minutes Blue Origin says it has finally solved the mystery that has echoed out ever since its New Glenn rocket exploded into a fiery mushroom cloud over Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station this past May. The catastrophic self-described "anomaly," which occurred during one of the private space company's pre-launch hotfire tests, not only sent spaceflight stocks tumbling but has also threatened to derail NASA's Artemis timeline for returning astronauts to the Moon. But, fortunately, Blue Origin's chief executive Dave Limp offered welcome news Wednesday after identifying the equipment failure that transformed New Glenn into a massive fireball two months ago: It sounds like a relatively quick fix. The only catch is that this issue, a fault within Blue Origin's reusable BE-4 rocket engines, could also likely impact future launches of United Launch Alliance's Vulcan Centaur, the spacecraft that the firm helped develop in collaboration with Lockheed Martin and Boeing. "The anomaly originated at the main oxygen valve on one of the BE-4 engines, which was later confirmed by hardware recovery and inspections," Limp said in a statement posted to X. "Extensive component-level and engine hotfire tests have been conducted to understand the failure mode better and inform mitigations." "The path forward is clear," according to Limp. "We're making small modifications to the valve that can be quickly retrofitted to existing engines." Blast from the (recent) past. When New Glenn blew up at Cape Canaveral on May 28, 2026, it took with it significant portions of its launchpad, Cape Canaveral Launch Complex 36A (LC-36A), which had spent about a decade undergoing extensive renovations after Blue Origin leased the site in 2015. Since then, the launchpad had only really been in operation for about 18 months, reopening when New Glenn itself first blasted off in January 2025. Most of Blue Origin's updates following this explosive accident have focused on its efforts to rapidly bring LC-36A back online. Thus far, the company says it has figured out a way to reuse LC-36A's still-intact launch bridge, remove and inspect its two-million-pound [900,000-kilogram] launch table, and modernize the site more in-line with Blue Origin's work on its sister launch pad, LC-36B. We're not rebuilding the same pad for New Glenn. We're moving to a horizontal/vertical hybrid configuration to get us flying again this year at 36A. We were already working on something similar for 9x4 at 36B. Let me explain what that means. We mate the stages horizontally in... pic.twitter.com/5I0f8GEojs - Dave Limp (@davill) June 30, 2026 But behind those announcements, according to Reuters, the Jeff Bezos-owned space firm has powered through a pressing and complicated technical investigation into the cause of this explosion, overseen by Limp. Blue Origin's ambitious goal is to make New Glenn flight-ready again by year's end. "We're manufacturing the updated hardware, which will be ready by the end of this month," Limp posted to X this week. "In parallel, we're working through the remaining fault tree analysis." Ongoing reverberations. Blue Origin's BE-4 engines power the first stage of the firm's partially reusable New Glenn launch vehicles - but two of its BE-4s also see use on each of United Launch Alliance's Vulcan as well. ULA has stated that it is collaborating with Blue Origin on its post-accident investigation into BE-4 issues but has not commented further on how the incident might impact their own future launch plans. That said, Vulcan has been dealing with its own issues, including an unrelated anomaly that lost one of its solid rocket booster (SBR) nozzles during a mission to deliver a U.S. Space Force satellite into geosynchronous orbit this past February. While Vulcan successfully completed this mission, it has not flown since. During a July 21 earnings call, Northrop Grumman, the firm that provides the GEM 63XL motors used in Vulcan's SBRs, asserted that it has taken "corrective actions" with the motor and will deliver a redesigned version "by the end of the year." Blue Origin's CEO has offered a similarly optimistic outlook for New Glenn. "Progress continues," Limp said.