The launch in Texas of a New Shepard spacecraft from Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos' space company, failed on Monday, space.com reported.
The launcher took off at 4:27 p.m. Belgian time for an unmanned scientific mission. When the New Shepard reached a height of 9,144 meters after a minute and five seconds, something went wrong.
The capsule activated its solid-fuel interrupter engine and eventually landed safely in Texas with its 36 experiments, half of which were for the US space agency NASA.
The cause of the failure is not yet known.
The New Shepard spacecraft will be grounded pending a formal accident investigation to be overseen by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the CBS television channel in the U.S. reported.
"Before the New Shepard vehicle can return to flight, the FAA will determine whether any system, process, or procedure related to the mishap affected public safety," CBS reported the FAA as saying in a statement.
"This is standard practice for all mishap investigations. The FAA is responsible for protecting the public during commercial space transportation launch and reentry operations," the agency added.
