New Glenn explosion jeopardises NASA's Artemis IV Moon landing timeline

Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket suffered a catastrophic explosion in late May 2025, raising serious doubts about NASA's Artemis IV crewed Moon landing. Space experts discussed the fallout: Blue Origin's current architecture requires four launches of a new rocket variant called 9x4 to deliver its lunar lander. SpaceX is building a rival lander and rocket in parallel. The timeline for Artemis IV now looks uncertain.

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New Glenn Catastrophe Aftermath: What's Next for the Space Industry? | Ars Live

This week Ars hosted a live discussion with two space industry experts about the aftermath of the catastrophic explosion of the New Glenn rocket in late May.

Along with Ars Technica Space Editor Eric Berger; the director of research at Quilty Space , Caleb Henry; and the host of the Main Engine Cut Off podcast , Anthony Colangelo, spoke about various topics. Chief among them was the implications of this failure for NASA's attempt to land humans on the Moon for the Artemis IV mission. Blue Origin and SpaceX are both building landers to support this goal and the rockets to deliver them to the Moon.

During the conversation, Berger reported that the current Blue Origin "architecture" for a human mission would require four launches of new variant of the New Glenn rocket, known as 9x4, because it has nine first stage engines, and four upper stage engines. This is a more powerful version than the "7x2" variant that exploded a little more than a month ago. Blue Origin has not set a target date for the 9x4 rocket's debut, but some sources have indicated the company is targeting late 2027 or early 2028.

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New Glenn explosion jeopardises NASA's Artemis IV Moon landing timeline

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