Blue Origin: oxygen valve failure in BE-4 engine caused New Glenn rocket catastrophe

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Blue Origin provided its first substantive update this week on the cause of the catastrophic loss of the New Glenn rocket and most of its launch pad infrastructure at Cape Canaveral, Florida, in May.

The space company's chief executive, Dave Limp, said investigative work is continuing into the anomaly that happened during a hot-fire test of the rocket during the evening of May 28, 2026. He confirmed, for the first time, widespread speculation that the problem started in one of the rocket's seven BE-4 engines that power the vehicle's first stage.

"The anomaly originated at the main oxygen valve on one of the BE-4 engines, which was later confirmed by hardware recovery and inspections," he said. "Extensive component-level and engine hotfire tests have been conducted to understand the failure mode better and inform mitigations."

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