Blue Origin rocket explosion sent sound waves 1,000 miles across the US, report finds

When Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket suddenly blew apart on a Florida launchpad earlier this year , it sent sound waves racing more than 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) across the U.S., new data reveals. While imperceptible to human ears, the subtle vibrations have helped researchers analyze the blast in surprising detail.

New Glenn is the largest and most powerful of Blue Origin's commercial rockets. It stands at 320 feet (98 meters) tall, roughly the same size as NASA 's Space Launch System (most recently used during the Artemis II mission), and is designed to compete with SpaceX's supersized Starship rockets . New Glenn has launched into space three times : first in January 2025; then again in November 2025, when it launched a pair of NASA spacecraft to Mars; and finally in April this year, when it reached space but failed to deploy a giant communication satellite. During the second launch , Blue Origin successfully landed the rocket's reusable booster on Earth, making it the second company to achieve this feat, after SpaceX .

But on May 29, during a static "hotfire test" at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, shortly before New Glenn's planned fourth launch, the rocket's booster violently exploded without warning . The blast shot bits of flaming debris into the air and unleashed a massive mushroom cloud that briefly lit up the night sky. On Aug. 5, Blue Origin revealed that a faulty oxygen valve likely caused the explosion, according to Live Science's sister site Space.com . (The company has not attempted to launch another New Glenn rocket since.)

The fiery failure is believed to be one of the most powerful prelaunch explosions ever seen. The damage caused to the launchpad alone could take at least a year to fix, according to Ars Technica . This not only affects Blue Origin's ability to launch rockets but could also delay NASA's proposed moon base , which will rely on New Glenn to launch some of its components.

Nobody was hurt by the explosion. But thousands of locals reported hearing a thunderous boom as they were hit with the resulting shockwave, which reached up to 135 miles (217 kilometers) from the launchpad, Florida Today previously reported . However, in terms of the sound produced by this event, this was just the tip of the iceberg.

In a new study, published Aug. 12 in the journal The Seismic Record , researchers analyzed data from special listening stations across the U.S. for signs of infrasound — ultra-low-frequency sound below the range of human hearing — that coincided with the blast. At least 36 stations picked up infrasound signals from the explosion, the farthest of which was located in northeast Texas, about 1,046 miles (1,684 km) from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

Detecting such distant low-frequency sound waves not only highlights the scale of the blast but also provided researchers with "a very rare opportunity to study [the] large real-world energetic event" in more detail, study first author Elizabeth Silber , a physicist and planetary scientist at the Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, wrote in a statement .

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