Blue Origin launchpad damaged in rocket explosion may not be restored until 2028, NASA's Isaacman says

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman on Monday told CNBC that it will "take some serious time" to restore the launchpad damaged last week by a Blue Origin rocket explosion.

Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin was conducting a hot-fire test of its massive New Glenn rocket on Thursday at a Space Force launch facility in Cape Canaveral, Florida, when the rocket erupted into a fireball. Bezos confirmed that all Blue Origin personnel were safe following the incident, and pledged to rebuild, while calling it a "very rough day."

A 2028 timeframe is "within the realm" of a possible launchpad recovery, Isaacman said in an interview at CNBC's CEO Council Summit.

"We're all getting organized generally around the idea that we certainly want to see Blue Origin be very successful," Isaacman said. "So recovering, getting the pad recovered, providing subject matter expertise, root cause analysis for sure. Let's figure out what's broken, and then we got to keep moving forward."

Isaacman, Bezos and Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp toured the launchpad and addressed the space startup's employees on Friday. Limp wrote in a Saturday post on X that Blue Origin has since regained some access to launchpad and developed a plan for rebuilding.

NASA has several contracts with Blue Origin as part of the space agency's Artemis program, an effort to return American astronauts to the Moon's surface by 2028. It tapped Blue Origin to launch an uncrewed Blue Moon lander, known as MK1, atop New Glenn later this year.

Getting the lander to the moon will require a rocket that can carry a significant amount of mass, Isaacman said. That will likely put NASA in "Falcon Heavy land," he said, referring to the super heavy-lift rocket developed by Elon Musk's SpaceX.

"In terms of heavy lift, you know, real heavy lift, you've got SpaceX and Blue Origin, and obviously one of them is down a pad right now," Isaacman said.

New Glenn was designed by Blue Origin to compete with SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, along with United Launch Alliance's Vulcan heavy-lift rocket.

Blue Origin only has one New Glenn launchpad, making Thursday's explosion an especially devastating mishap. It plans to operate a New Glenn launchpad out of Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, but that pad remains in development.

"We've got a lot of data, in fact, it was one of the first things my team made available, is, hey, across history of human space flight, of every launch pad we've built, every launch pad we ever had to rebuild, here's the timelines," Isaacman said. "Even if you're moving at, you know, a pretty quick pace, that's going to take some serious time."

The incident also impacts Blue Origin's other customers, including Amazon. Blue Origin was set to ferry 48 satellites for Amazon's nascent Leo internet-from-space venture this week, as part of several upcoming missions.

Amazon, which Bezos founded in 1994, has a pending deadline by the Federal Communications Commission to deploy about half of its constellation by next month. It's also working to bring its Leo service online for commercial customers later this year, which aims to compete with SpaceX's Starlink.

AST SpaceMobile, which is building a direct-to-device satellite system, also relies on Blue Origin for some rocket launches. The stock closed down more than 6% on Monday, after falling almost 17% on Friday.