The aerospace company, founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, had to delay the eagerly awaited launch of its New Glenn rocket on the weekend because of unfavorable meteorological factors at Cape Canaveral.
Mission Postponement Causes
Precipitation and a technical problem on the ground caused early setbacks, then came cumulus cloud cover as the 88-minute launch window closed, leaving mission controllers to push back the vehicle's upcoming flight.
Competition between Bezos' firm and Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been intensifying in the past few months.
Rescheduled Attempt
To ease traffic in the skies amid the US federal government shutdown, the Federal Aviation Administration is limiting commercial rocket liftoffs from Monday.
After scrubbing the launch, Blue Origin said late Sunday that, working alongside the regulatory body, it was targeting another attempt as soon as Wednesday within a window of afternoon hours Eastern Standard time.
Mission Objectives
Upon successful liftoff, the 98-meter tall launch vehicle will carry NASA’s two Mars-bound probes to the Red Planet, to study the Martian atmospheric past with the long-term goal of human exploration.
Blue Origin’s launch will also act as a crucial trial of whether it can achieve booster recovery, which would prove a major advancement for the company if successful.
Previous Flight
The rocket's first launch 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 designed as reusable, failed to make its touchdown on a platform in the Atlantic, and ended up destroyed during the return phase.
Landing Attempts
For this new mission Blue Origin will make another attempt to recover the first stage.
Thus far, only SpaceX has managed that accomplishment.
Industry Competition
The competing companies of tycoons Bezos and Musk are engaged in a commercial space race that has grown more intense lately, as NASA began accepting proposals for its lunar exploration program, noting that SpaceX was lagging behind.
The current administration has seen 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.
More rivalry between SpaceX and Blue Origin could “expand our options with regard to launch.”
“More launches means more ideas in orbit,” a former NASA chief technologist said. “It can’t be a negative to have the competitor, even trailing behind.”
