News
Blue Origin rocket launch fails after engine catches fire
Blue Origin’s suborbital New Shepard rocket suffered a catastrophic engine failure during its 23rd launch attempt, ending a seven-year streak of 21 successes.
Following a handful of mostly weather-related delays that pushed New Shepard’s 23rd launch about two weeks past its original August 31st target, the single-stage vehicle lifted off from Blue Origin’s Van Horn, Texas launch site around 10:25 am CDT (14:25 UTC) on September 12th. Measuring about 15 meters (49 ft) tall, 3.7 meters (12.1 ft) wide, and capable of producing about 50 tons (~110,000 lbf) of thrust with its lone BE-3 engine at full throttle, New Shepard only made it about halfway through its nominal powered ascent before catastrophe struck.
The first signs of trouble appeared about 62 seconds after liftoff in the form of flickers and flashes in New Shepard’s exhaust, which is normally almost transparent. Less than two seconds after the first seemingly harmless flash, flames unintentionally burst from New Shepard’s engine section and quickly surrounded its BE-3PM engine. Less than a second after that, the rocket’s aft and began shedding pieces and stopped producing thrust, triggering a solid rocket motor stored inside its deployable capsule.
About a second after the incident began, the capsule’s abort motor ignited and carried the suborbital spacecraft safely away from the failing New Shepard booster. The capsule ultimately coasted to an apogee of 11.4 kilometers (7.1 miles) – almost ten times lower than nominal – before descending back to Earth, deploying its parachute system, and safely touching down in the Texas desert scrub. Thankfully, NS-23 was only carrying experiments, and no humans were at risk. Had a crew of suborbital tourists been aboard, they would have likely been a little battered but otherwise completely unharmed.
..there is room for a lot of speculation ?– i did a frame by frame Picture – on the bottom row you can see some parts falling away. maybe the nozzle fell apart?!? pic.twitter.com/OOzPkPiX6G— Flo (@FloSpacenerd) September 12, 2022
While any failure of a rocket is unfortunate, the failure of a rocket nominally designed to launch humans can have even worse repercussions. However, thanks to the seemingly flawless unplanned performance of New Shepard’s abort system, it’s safe to say that the day could have gone much worse for Blue Origin.
The failure is still not going to do the reputation of Blue Origin or New Shepard any favors. It also invites less than favorable comparisons with SpaceX, a different spaceflight startup also funded and founded by a tech tycoon in the early 2000s.
Founded a year and a half after Blue Origin, SpaceX, in comparison, reached orbit with Falcon 1 in 2008. In June 2010, it successfully debuted Falcon 9, an orbital-class rocket roughly 20 times larger. In 2012, Falcon 9 successfully launched an orbital Dragon spacecraft which became the first private vehicle to dock to the International Space Station. In January 2015, it attempted to recover a Falcon 9 booster for the first time. In December 2015, one month after Blue Origin’s first successful New Shepard landing, SpaceX aced its first Falcon 9 booster landing.
Nine months later, Falcon 9 suffered a catastrophic failure during prelaunch testing in September 2016 and didn’t return to flight until January 2017. That is where, for the most part, the paths of Blue Origin and SpaceX almost entirely diverged – but not in any obvious way. Instead, after a successful suborbital launch in October 2016, New Shepard didn’t fly again until December 2017. In the roughly six years between October 2016 and September 2022, New Shepard completed 10 uncrewed suborbital launches, 6 suborbital tourist launches, and suffered one failure during another uncrewed mission – 18 total launches.
Despite suffering a catastrophic failure that destroyed a customer’s multimillion-dollar satellite in September 2016, SpaceX returned to flight four months later, completed 150 orbital Falcon launches without fail in the same period; debuted the world’s largest operational rocket, Falcon Heavy, and completed two additional launches with it; debuted Crew Dragon and Cargo Dragon 2 on Falcon 9; launched its first astronauts into orbit, launched its first operational astronaut transport mission for NASA, launched its first two Starlink internet satellite prototypes, launched another 60 refined Starlink prototypes, began operational Falcon 9 Starlink launches, built and launched more than 3000 Starlink satellites total; landed 130+ Falcon boosters, and reuse Falcon boosters 117 times.
The differences could not be more stark or strange, given that both companies have been operating more or less side by side and working towards similar goals for as long as they’ve existed. To Blue Origin’s credit, the company managed a record six New Shepard launches – three carrying tourists – in 2021. NS-23 was its fourth planned launch in 2022, suggesting that it could have achieved a similar cadence this year if the mission had had a different fate. Instead, the launch failure has triggered an anomaly investigation that will search for the root cause and try to uncover shortcomings that will then need to be rectified before New Shepard can return to flight. Given that Blue Origin once went 15 months between successful New Shepard launches, it’s impossible to say how long that process will take.
In the meantime, the apparent failure of New Shepard’s BE-3PM engine could trigger investigations into Blue Origin’s other engine programs. While substantially different, BE-3U, a variant optimized for the upper stage of New Glenn, Blue Origin’s first orbital rocket, likely shares the most in common with New Shepard’s BE-3PM. BE-7, a small engine meant to power a Moon lander, could also be impacted.
Most importantly, Blue Origin is also in the midst of finally preparing two much more powerful and far more complex BE-4 engines for customer United Launch Alliance (ULA). Years behind schedule, Blue Origin completed the first two theoretically flightworthy BE-4 engines and began putting them through qualification testing earlier this year. It wants to ship those engines to ULA as soon as possible to avoid delaying the debut of the customer’s new Vulcan Centaur rocket. BE-3PM and BE-4 probably don’t share a single part, but many Blue Origin employees have likely worked on both programs, and the same Blue Origin leadership has certainly overseen both. As long as there’s any form of commonality, no matter how abstract, there’s always a risk that the underlying cause of problems in one program could be present in others.
Ultimately, it’s unlikely that there will be any serious connection. The New Shepard booster that failed on NS-23 was almost five years old and was flying for a record-breaking ninth time. It’s possible that Blue Origin was privately worried about the possibility of failure while pushing the envelope, but it offered no qualifications while discussing the mission. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, in comparison, has almost always made it clear that failure is a possibility when the company attempts ‘firsts’ of any kind.
SpaceX recently launched and recovered the same Falcon 9 booster for the 14th time, setting its own internal record. As a result, that lone Falcon 9 booster, B1058, has flown as many times in the last 31 months as all New Shepard boosters combined have flown in the last 45 months.
Finally, while no company should be put in that position, Blue Origin deserves praise for its live coverage of the anomaly. Instead of immediately cutting the feeds, which would be what most providers would be expected to do during an operational launch, Blue Origin continued to broadcast views of the failure and provide live commentary until New Shepard’s capsule touched down well ahead of schedule.
Investor's Corner
LIVE BLOG: Tesla (TSLA) Q3 2025 earnings call
The following are live updates from Tesla’s Q3 2025 earnings call.
Tesla’s (NASDAQ:TSLA) earnings call comes on the heels of the company’s Q3 2025 update letter, which was released after the closing bell on October 22, 2025.
Tesla’s Q3 2025 Results
As could be seen in Tesla’s Q3 2025 Update Letter, the company posted GAAP EPS of $0.39 and non-GAAP EPS of $0.50 per share. Tesla also posted total revenues of $28.095 billion. GAAP net income is also listed at $1.37 billion.
Tesla’s total revenue increased 12% YoY to $28.1 billion, while operating income decreased 40% YoY to $1.6 billion. This means that for Q3 2025, Tesla’s had a 5.8% operating margin. Tesla’s quarter-end cash, cash equivalents and investments was $41.6 billion by the end of the third quarter.
Earnings call updates
The following are live updates from Tesla’s Q3 2025 earnings call. I will be updating this article in real time, so please keep refreshing the page to view the latest updates on this story.
16:25 CT – Good day to everyone, and welcome to another Tesla earnings call live blog. The Q3 2025 Update Letter seemed to be on the quieter side, but it’s hard not to be impressed with Tesla’s $4 billion free cash flow, an all-time high.
Now we just have to see how the earnings call will go.
16:30 CT – Looks like the earnings call’s livestream is up. It hasn’t started yet, but the music’s on. Here’s the livestream:
16:33 CT – One of the most fun things about Tesla earnings call coverages is that you don’t really know what type of Elon Musk you’re gonna get. The questions from investors and analysts are always fun too.
16:35 CT – And here we go. Travis Axelrod takes the floor and introduces Tesla’s executives.
16:36 CT – Elon’s opening remarks begin. He says Tesla is at a critical point because real-world AI is imminent. He states that he believes Tesla has the highest intelligence density. “It’s gonna be like a shockwave,” Elon said, highlighting that there are millions of cars out there that could become full self-driving with a simple software update.
16:38 CT – With Tesla achieving clarity on Unsupervised FSD, Musk stated that he feels “confident in expanding Tesla’s production.” He also noted that Tesla Energy is rising quickly, especially with products like the Powerwall and the Megapack. “We see the potential there for Tesla battery packs to improve the energy output per year of any given grid, the US or otherwise.”
16:40 CT – Elon also reiterated his prediction that Tesla Optimus could be the largest product in the world. A good reason for this is the fact that Tesla has scale, Musk stated. Musk also stated that it’s easy for users in the United States to test out FSD V14 for themselves. He also mentioned that Tesla is currently hard at work with Megapack 4.
“We look forward to unveiling Optimus V3 in Q1. I think it will be quite remarkable,” Musk said, adding that V3 will almost seem like a person in a robot suit.
16:45 CT – Musk summed up his opening remarks with a comment on Tesla’s updated mission.
“In conclusion, we’re excited about the updated mission of Tesla, which is sustainable abundance. We’re going beyond sustainable energy. We believe that with Optimus and self-driving, we can actually create a world where there is no poverty, where everyone has access to the finest medical care.
“Optimus will be an incredible surgeon. Imagine if everyone had access to an incredible surgeon. I think we’re headed to sustainable abundance, and I’m excited to work with the Tesla team to make that happen,” Musk said, summing up.
16:48 CT – Tesla CFO Vaibhav Taneja discussed the company’s rollout of its expanded Model Y lineup such as the Model Y L, as well as the advantages of the Robotaxi network. He also confirmed that Tesla is looking to secure approvals for FSD tests in several areas across the globe.
He also discussed Tesla’s regulatory credits. “”While regulatory credits declined sequentially, we entered into new contracts and delivered on previous contracts,” he said.
16:54 CT – Investor questions are asked about demand for Megapack and Powerwall. Tesla noted that Tesla is seeing a lot of interest and demand for Megapack and its related products. There is also a surge in demand for residential batteries.
Looks like the Tesla Solar Roof is coming alive as well.
16:59 CT – A question about the challenges of Optimus’ rollout was asked. Elon Musk noted that bringing Optimus to market would not be a walk in the park. It will be a very difficult endeavor. “It’s an incredibly difficult thing,” Musk said, adding that the hands of Optimus are very difficult to design and produce due to its complexity.
Tesla is really putting a ton of work on Optimus’ hands, likely because the robot will need to be very dexterous to be useful in both residential and industrial applications. He noted that for Optimus to be successful, Tesla must really be vertically integrated.
Elon also mentioned that Optimus is one of the reasons behind his goals with his 2025 compensation plan. He needs control of Tesla if the company is building a literal robot army.
17:05 CT – A question about Tesla’s chip deal with Samsung. Elon noted that he has nothing but good things to say about Samsung. He then clarified that Tesla will be focusing both TSMC and Samsung on AI5.
“The AI5 chip design by Tesla is an amazing design. I have spent every weekend for the last few months with the chip design team working with AI5,” Musk said. “By some metrics, the AI5 chip will be 40x better than the AI4 chip.” This is because the hardware is designed for Tesla’s software stack.
There is also a lot of efficiencies and deletions that have been implemented on AI5. “This is a beautiful chip,” Musk said, reiterating that both Samsung and TSMC will be producing AI5. Tesla wants an oversupply of AI5 chips. If there’s an oversupply, Musk said that the chips could just be used for training in Tesla’s data center.
17:09 CT – A question was asked about Tesla abandoning HW3 was asked. The CFO stated that Tesla is not abandoning HW3. “We will definitely take care of you guys,” he said, adding that he himself is driving a HW3 car. Tesla executives also noted that the company is developing a V14 “Lite” for HW3 cars.
17:13 CT – A question about the Tesla Semi’s autonomy was asked. Tesla noted that things are progressing with the Semi program. Analyst questions now begin. First up is Wolfe Research, which asked about Elon’s comment about Tesla now focusing on volume with FSD now developed.
Elon Musk responded that Tesla’s capacity today is not at 3 million cars yet, but Tesla can probably achieve that level in 24 months or less. “We’re gonna expand production as fast as we can, and as fast as our suppliers can keep up with it,” he said.
He added that the Cybercab will be a big project since it’s a your de force of engineering optimization due to its driverless nature. He also stated that Cybercab production will start in Q2 2026.
17:21 CT – Barclays asked about markets that are outside of Tesla’s core competencies. Elon noted that Tesla had zero core competency when it started. He highlighted that Tesla today is still a bunch of startups that are working together. He did also state that “Optimus at scale is an infinite money glitch” since it could 5X a person’s productivity.
17:27 CT – Lightshed asks about the Robotaxi program and the removal of safety drivers in Austin by year end. Musk noted that Tesla will be very cautious with FSD’s rollout. He noted that Tesla will be paranoid about safety. He noted that Tesla typically rolls out its FSD updates with safety at the forefront, so first builds of a major release tend to be safe but not as smooth.
“This car will feel like a living creature,” Musk reiterated, adding that Teslas will eventually be able to find parking spots on their own intelligently.
17:34 CT – Oppenheimer asked about the timeline of Optimus production. Musk noted that the hardware design of Optimus will not be frozen even after the humanoid robot starts its production. “We’ll have a production-intent prototype ready to show in Q1,” Musk said, adding that hopefully, Optimus will enter production late next year.
17:37 CT – Questions for this earnings call are done, and in closing, the CFO urged shareholders to vote on the Board’s recommendations. Tesla’s future depends on it.
17:41 CT – And that wraps up Tesla’s third quarter 2025 earnings call! Thank you so much for following along as we covered this event. Until the next time!
Investor's Corner
Tesla (TSLA) Q3 2025 earnings results
Tesla’s Q3 earnings come on the heels of a quarter where the company produced over 447,000 vehicles, delivered over 497,000 vehicles, and deployed 12.5 GWh of energy storage products.
Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) has released its Q3 2025 earnings results in an update letter. The document was posted on the electric vehicle maker’s official Investor Relations website after markets closed today, October 22, 2025.
Tesla’s Q3 earnings come on the heels of a quarter where the company produced over 447,000 vehicles, delivered over 497,000 vehicles, and deployed 12.5 GWh of energy storage products.
Tesla’s Q3 2025 results
As could be seen in Tesla’s Q3 2025 Update Letter, the company posted GAAP EPS of $0.39 and non-GAAP EPS of $0.50 per share. Tesla also posted total revenues of $28.095 billion. GAAP net income is also listed at $1.37 billion.
In comparison, FactSet consensus expects Tesla to post earnings per share of around $0.56, down 22% from Q3 2024’s $0.72 per share. Tesla’s revenue is forecasted to rise 5.4% to $26.54 billion, as noted in an Investor.com report.
On the other hand, Sharp consensus, which tracks analyst revision trends, predicts Tesla to post earnings of $0.57 per share and revenue totaling $28.31 billion.
Other key results
Tesla highlighted the following Q3 results in its Update Letter.
As per Tesla, it is stil profitable with $1.6 billion GAAP operating income, $1.4 billion GAAP net income, and $1.8 billion non-GAAP net income. By the end of the third quarter, Tesla had an operating cash flow of $6.2 billion and record free cash flow of nearly $4.0 billion.
Tesla’s total revenue increased 12% YoY to $28.1 billion, while operating income decreased 40% YoY to $1.6 billion. This means that for Q3 2025, Tesla’s had a 5.8% operating margin. Tesla’s quarter-end cash, cash equivalents and investments were at $41.6 billion by the end of the third quarter.
Tesla’s Q3 2025 Update Letter
News
Tesla’s new Safety Report shows Autopilot is nine times safer than humans
Tesla released its Vehicle Safety Report for Q3 2025, and it showed that one crash was recorded every 6.36 million miles drive in which drivers were using Autopilot technology.
Tesla’s new Safety Report for Q3 shows Autopilot technology contributed to accident frequency that was nine times lower than the national average.
Tesla released its Vehicle Safety Report for Q3 2025, and it showed that one crash was recorded every 6.36 million miles drive in which drivers were using Autopilot technology.
This is a stark contrast from the most recent data made available by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), which shows there is an automobile crash approximately every 702,000 miles.
Autopilot & FSD Supervised safety data
In Q3 2025, we recorded 1 crash for every 6.36 million miles driven in which drivers were using Autopilot technology
By comparison, the most recent data available from NHTSA & FHWA (from 2023) shows that in the United States there was an… pic.twitter.com/8isNe7X4vg
— Tesla (@Tesla) October 22, 2025
The figure for Q3 2025 is slightly lower than the one that Tesla released in Q3 2024, which eclipsed 7 million miles between accidents for drivers using Autopilot technology.
Over the past seven quarters, Q1 has been Tesla’s strongest showing with the Vehicle Safety Report, with Q4 being the weakest. This is usually attributed to weather and driving conditions deteriorating toward the end of the year.
Q1 2024 was Tesla’s best performance so far, with one crash every 7.63 million miles.
Autopilot and Full Self-Driving have been a major focus of Tesla over the past few years, and recent versions have improved on what has already proven to be an extremely safe way to travel, as long as it is used correctly.
Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) suite is a suitable way to allow the vehicle to navigate through any traffic setting and has been widely effective for day-to-day travel. With the data Tesla gets from its use across its vehicle fleet, it gets more refined and more accurate with every passing mile.
The company has teased the potential for completely unsupervised Full Self-Driving releases in the future, but Tesla has to solve autonomy before it can offer anything like that to the public.
LIVE BLOG: Tesla (TSLA) Q3 2025 earnings call
Tesla (TSLA) Q3 2025 earnings results
Tesla’s new Safety Report shows Autopilot is nine times safer than humans
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