An Explosion Knocked Out Anduril’s Rocket Motor Test Site in Mississippi
Key takeaways
- No one was injured in the blast, which damaged Anduril’s testing stand, the company’s chief operating officer Matt Grimm said in a social media post on Tuesday hours after WIRED contacted the company about the incident.
- The incident halted a key step in the prototype testing work that generates revenue for Anduril's rocket motor unit, and rebuilding the setup could take up to a couple of months, one of the people says.
- Grimm wrote in his post, which included photos of smoldered equipment, that Anduril expects to resume testing within weeks.
Why this matters: a development in AI with implications for how people work, create, and decide.
Photograph: Kyle Grillot/Getty Images Comment Loader Save Story Save this story Comment Loader Save Story Save this story. A rocket motor exploded during a test at an Anduril facility in Mississippi last Friday, marking another setback in the startup’s hopes of becoming a major supplier of missile propulsion systems for the defense industry. Anduril publicly confirmed the incident after an inquiry from WIRED.
No one was injured in the blast, which damaged Anduril’s testing stand, the company’s chief operating officer Matt Grimm said in a social media post on Tuesday hours after WIRED contacted the company about the incident.
Three people familiar with Anduril’s operations, who were granted anonymity to discuss a sensitive situation, tell WIRED that they can't recall another time when a similar test resulted in an explosion in the past few years, and they were unaware of what may have caused last week’s mishap. The incident halted a key step in the prototype testing work that generates revenue for Anduril's rocket motor unit, and rebuilding the setup could take up to a couple of months, one of the people says.