The aerospace company, owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, was forced to delay the highly anticipated liftoff of its powerful launch vehicle on Sunday because of adverse weather factors at the Florida launch site.
Launch Delay Causes
Precipitation and a ground system issue caused initial delays, then came cumulus cloud cover as the narrow time frame for launch closed, leaving managers to push back the rocket’s planned second mission.
Rivalry between Bezos' firm and Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been heating up in the past few months.
Rescheduled Attempt
To relieve traffic in the skies amid the government funding gap, the Federal Aviation Administration is limiting commercial rocket liftoffs from the beginning of the week.
Following the cancellation of the launch, Blue Origin said on Sunday evening that, in coordination with the regulatory body, it was aiming for another attempt as soon as midweek within a window of 2.50pm to 4.17pm EST.
Launch Goals
When it eventually launches, the 98-meter tall launch vehicle will carry NASA’s Escapade twin spacecraft to Mars, in an effort to examine the Martian atmospheric past with the eventual hope of sending people there.
The mission will also act as a key test of whether it can achieve reusable rocket landing, which would prove a major advancement for the firm if accomplished.
Earlier Mission
New Glenn’s inaugural flight in January was marked as a achievement, as its payload reached space and completed experiments.
But its main rocket section, which was designed as recoverable, failed to make its landing on a platform in the Atlantic, and ended up destroyed during the return phase.
Landing Attempts
In its second effort Blue Origin will try once more to land the booster stage.
Until now, only SpaceX has achieved that accomplishment.
Space Race
Rival firms of billionaires Bezos and Musk are locked in a commercial space race that recently escalated, as the space agency began accepting bids for its planned moon mission, noting that one company was falling behind schedule.
The current administration has involved the government pile pressure on NASA to speed up its progress to send a crewed mission to the lunar surface amid a race with China.
Increased competition between SpaceX and Blue Origin could “give us more choices with regard to liftoff.”
“More launches means more ideas in orbit,” a former NASA chief technologist said. “It can’t be a bad thing to have the competitor, even not in the lead.”
