The aerospace company, founded by entrepreneur Jeff Bezos, was forced to postpone the eagerly awaited launch of its New Glenn rocket on the weekend due to unfavorable weather factors at the Florida launch site.
Launch Delay Causes
Precipitation and a technical problem on the ground caused initial delays, then came cumulus cloud cover as the 88-minute launch window closed, forcing mission controllers to reschedule the rocket’s planned second mission.
Rivalry between Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been heating up in the past few months.
Rescheduled Attempt
To ease traffic in the skies amid the government funding gap, the Federal Aviation Administration is limiting commercial rocket liftoffs from the beginning of the week.
After scrubbing the mission, Blue Origin said on Sunday evening that, working alongside the FAA, it was targeting a new try as early as Wednesday within a window of 2.50pm to 4.17pm Eastern Standard time.
Mission Objectives
Upon successful liftoff, the 98-meter tall launch vehicle will carry NASA’s Escapade twin spacecraft to the Red Planet, to examine the Martian atmospheric past with the eventual hope of sending people there.
Blue Origin’s launch will also act as a crucial trial of whether it can achieve reusable rocket landing, which would represent a major advancement for the firm if successful.
Previous Flight
New Glenn’s inaugural flight in January was marked as a achievement, as its cargo reached space and successfully performed experiments.
But its main rocket section, which was designed as reusable, failed to make its landing on a platform in the Atlantic, and instead was lost during the return phase.
Recovery Efforts
For this new mission the launch provider will try once more to land the first stage.
Thus far, only SpaceX has achieved that feat.
Space Race
The competing companies of tycoons Bezos and Musk are locked in a private sector space competition that has grown more intense lately, as NASA began accepting proposals for its planned moon mission, complaining that SpaceX was falling behind schedule.
The current administration has involved the administration push NASA to speed up its timeline to send a crewed mission to the lunar surface amid a race with China.
More rivalry between the two firms 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 Blue Origin, even trailing behind.”
