Nasa’s plans to build a lunar base and return humans to the moon in the next two years were thrown into jeopardy after a New Glenn rocket from Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin company exploded during a test in Florida.
A massive fireball engulfed and destroyed the launchpad at the Kennedy Space Center seconds after the start of the scheduled “hotfire” test at 9pm ET, and an orange sky was visible in Fort Pierce, 185km (115 miles) to the south.
