Watch Blue Origin's Rocket Catch Fire And Trigger An Emergency Escape Pod Shortly After Launch

Blue Origin experienced a booster failure during a launch of its New Shepard capsule yesterday and became engulfed in flames. The rocket failure occurred about one minute post launch and prompted the space company to perform an emergency abort midflight.

Jeff Bezos' company launched mission NS-23 at approximately 10:36 a.m. EDT, from its dedicated launch site in West Texas. The spacecraft was carrying 36 payloads and experiments from various research institutions on its ill-fated mission. About one minute into the flight, the rocket can be seen becoming engulfed in flames. Shortly after, the escape pod can be seen floating down back to Earth. You can watch the fiery event via the YouTube player below.


Blue Origin tweeted shortly after the failed launch that there was a booster failure, and that the "escape system performed as designed." This is ultimately good news. It is important to know the safety measures function properly had there been any crew aboard the New Shepard capsule following the aborted mission. As of right now, the company does not know what caused the booster failure, but officials tweeted Monday, "More information to come as it is available."

The company has made headlines in the recent past, as it has sent the likes of William Shatner of Star Trek fame, and football great Michael Strahan into space as part of six suborbital missions to date. Jeff Bezos was one of four passengers on the first manned mission for the billionaire's space company.

This was the 23rd flight on record for the New Shepard space capsule, and the first cargo-only mission since last year. Both the capsule and rocket were created to be reusable, but it is not known if the rocket remained intact following Monday's incident.