Blue Origin, founded by entrepreneur Jeff Bezos, was forced to delay the highly anticipated liftoff of its New Glenn rocket on Sunday due to unfavorable weather factors at the Florida launch site.
Mission Postponement Reasons
Rainfall and a technical problem on the ground caused early setbacks, followed by cumulus cloud cover as the 88-minute launch window closed, forcing managers to push back the vehicle's upcoming flight.
Rivalry between Bezos' firm and Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been heating up in the past few months.
Rescheduled Attempt
To relieve airspace congestion amid the government funding gap, the Federal Aviation Administration is limiting commercial rocket liftoffs from the beginning of the week.
After scrubbing the mission, the company said late Sunday that, in coordination with the regulatory body, it was aiming for a new try as early as Wednesday within a time slot of 2.50pm to 4.17pm Eastern Standard time.
Mission Objectives
Upon successful liftoff, the 322-foot tall launch vehicle will transport NASA’s Escapade twin spacecraft to Mars, to study the planet’s climate history with the eventual hope of human exploration.
Blue Origin’s launch will also serve as a crucial trial of its ability to perform reusable rocket landing, which would prove a technical breakthrough for the company if successful.
Earlier Mission
New Glenn’s inaugural flight in January was marked as a achievement, as its cargo achieved orbit and successfully performed experiments.
But its first-stage booster, which was meant to be reusable, failed to make its landing on a ocean-based target in the ocean, and instead was lost during descent.
Recovery Efforts
For this new mission Blue Origin will make another attempt to land the booster stage.
Until now, only SpaceX has managed that accomplishment.
Space Race
The competing companies of billionaires Bezos and Musk are engaged in a private sector space competition that has grown more intense lately, as the space agency began accepting bids for its planned moon mission, noting that SpaceX was falling behind schedule.
The current administration has involved the government push NASA to accelerate its timeline to launch astronauts to the Moon in competition against the Asian nation.
Increased competition between SpaceX and Blue Origin could “give us more choices with regard to launch.”
“More launches means greater innovation in orbit,” an ex-agency official stated. “It can’t be a bad thing to have the competitor, even trailing behind.”
