The aerospace company, founded by entrepreneur Jeff Bezos, had to postpone the highly anticipated launch of its powerful launch vehicle on Sunday due to adverse weather factors at Cape Canaveral.
Launch Delay Causes
Rainfall and a ground system issue led to initial delays, followed by thick clouds as the narrow time frame for launch closed, leaving mission controllers to reschedule the rocket’s planned second mission.
Competition between Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been intensifying in the past few months.
New Launch Window
To relieve traffic in the skies during the government funding gap, the aviation regulator is restricting commercial rocket liftoffs starting Monday.
Following the cancellation of the mission, Blue Origin said late Sunday that, in coordination with the FAA, it was targeting a new try as early as midweek within a time slot of afternoon hours EST.
Launch Goals
Upon successful liftoff, the 98-meter tall launch vehicle will carry NASA’s Escapade twin spacecraft to the Red Planet, in an effort to examine the planet’s climate history with the eventual hope of sending people there.
Blue Origin’s launch will also act as a crucial trial of whether it can achieve booster recovery, which would prove a technical breakthrough for the firm if accomplished.
Previous Flight
New Glenn’s inaugural flight in the start of the year was marked as a success, as its payload reached space and successfully performed tests.
But its first-stage booster, which was meant to be reusable, did not stick its landing on a ocean-based target in the ocean, and ended up destroyed during descent.
Landing Attempts
For this new mission the launch provider will make another attempt to recover the booster stage.
Thus far, only SpaceX has achieved that feat.
Industry Competition
The competing companies of tycoons Bezos and Musk are engaged in a private sector space competition that has grown more intense lately, as NASA opened up proposals for its lunar exploration program, noting that SpaceX was lagging behind.
The current administration has involved the government pile pressure on NASA to speed up its timeline to send a crewed mission to the lunar surface amid a race with the Asian nation.
More rivalry between the two firms could “expand our options with regard to launch.”
“Additional missions means more ideas in space,” a former NASA chief technologist stated. “It can’t be a bad thing to have the competitor, even not in the lead.”
