Blue Origin, owned by entrepreneur Jeff Bezos, had to delay the eagerly awaited launch of its New Glenn rocket on the weekend because of unfavorable weather factors at Cape Canaveral.
Mission Postponement Causes
Rainfall and a ground system issue caused initial delays, followed by cumulus cloud cover as the narrow time frame for launch ended, forcing mission controllers 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.
New Launch Window
To ease traffic in the skies during the government funding gap, the Federal Aviation Administration is limiting commercial rocket liftoffs starting Monday.
After scrubbing the mission, the company said on Sunday evening that, in coordination with the FAA, it was aiming for another attempt as early as midweek within a window of afternoon hours EST.
Mission Objectives
When it eventually launches, the 98-meter New Glenn rocket will transport NASA’s Escapade twin spacecraft to the Red Planet, 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 whether it can achieve reusable rocket landing, which would prove a major advancement for the firm if successful.
Earlier Mission
The rocket's first launch in January was considered 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 instead was lost during the return phase.
Landing Attempts
In its second effort Blue Origin will try once more to land the booster stage.
Thus far, only SpaceX has achieved that feat.
Space Race
Rival firms of billionaires Bezos and Musk are locked in a private sector space competition that has grown more intense lately, as the space agency began accepting bids for its planned moon mission, complaining that SpaceX was lagging behind.
The current administration has involved the administration pile pressure on the agency to accelerate its progress to launch astronauts to the Moon amid a race with the Asian nation.
Increased competition between SpaceX and Blue Origin could “give us more choices with regard to launch.”
“More launches means more ideas in orbit,” a former NASA chief technologist said. “It can’t be a bad thing to have Blue Origin, even not in the lead.”
