The explosion of the New Glenn rocket in Florida in May was as powerful as the Chernobyl reactor explosion in 1986, creating sound waves that spread more than 1,600 km to Texas.
Live Science reported that when Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket suddenly exploded on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Station, Florida in May, the incident created sound waves that spread more than 1,600 km across the United States. Although the human ear cannot hear this type of extremely low frequency sound, the vibrations still help researchers analyze the details of the explosion.
Although no one was injured in the incident, thousands of local people reported hearing a loud explosion like thunder due to the impact of the shock wave, which spread up to 217 km from the launch pad. But this is just the "tip of the iceberg".
In research published August 12 in the journal The Seismic Record, scientists at Sandia National Laboratories analyzed data from special listening stations across the United States to look for signs of infrasound (sound waves with frequencies lower than 20 Hz, below the threshold of human hearing), at the time of the explosion. At least 36 stations received infrasound signals from the explosion, the furthest of which was in northeast Texas, about 1,684 km from the Cape Canaveral Space Station.
Dr. Elizabeth Silber, a physicist and planetary scientist at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, shared that the detection of such far-reaching ultra-low-frequency sound waves not only highlights the scale of the explosion but also provides the research team with a rare opportunity to analyze a real-world high-energy event in a more detailed way. Based on the frequency and distance traveled by the sound waves, they estimated the explosion was as powerful as 131 tons of TNT, slightly higher than the initial explosion that destroyed the nuclear reactor at Chornobyl in 1986.
The team also calculated how much rocket fuel was consumed in the explosion. Although the company did not disclose the exact amount of fuel in the booster stage, it estimates that about 3-6% of the rocket's cryogenic propellant was used. While this number may seem low, especially considering the size of the fireball, the estimate was within the researchers' expected range. In a major accident, Silber explains, fuel and oxidizer do not necessarily mix and react at the same time. Some materials may contribute to the initial explosion, while other materials may gradually burn in the fireball and smoke plume.
New Glenn is the largest and most powerful commercial rocket built by Blue Origin. The vehicle is 98 meters tall, equivalent to the Space Launch System (SLS) NASA recently used on the Artemis II mission and is designed to compete with SpaceX's giant Starship rocket. New Glenn flew into space three times in January 2025, November 2025, and April 2026. On the second launch, Blue Origin successfully landed the rocket's reusable booster stage, becoming the second company to achieve this feat, after SpaceX.
However, on May 29, during a static fire test at the Cape Canaveral Space Station, just before the fourth launch, the rocket's booster stage exploded violently, shooting fiery debris into the air and creating a huge mushroom cloud that lit up the night sky. According to Space, on August 5, Blue Origin revealed that a faulty oxygen valve could cause problems.
This was one of the most powerful pre-launch explosions ever recorded. Ars Technica said it could take Blue Origin at least a year to repair damage to the launch pad. The explosion would not only affect the company's ability to launch rockets, but could also slow construction of NASA's lunar base, which depends on New Glenn to launch some components.
According to Phys.org, infrasound is a familiar method for detecting large explosions and strong atmospheric events such as the 2022 Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcanic eruption. The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) uses infrasound as one of the main monitoring techniques to detect nuclear tests.
The results of the study show that infrasound analysis can be useful in monitoring missile launch abnormalities. The study also provides valuable information about the infrasound signals generated by the liquid oxygen/methane fuel increasingly common in heavy space rockets.
