The aerospace company, founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, was forced to delay the highly anticipated liftoff of its New Glenn rocket on Sunday due to adverse meteorological factors at Cape Canaveral.
Mission Postponement Causes
Precipitation and a ground system issue led to initial delays, followed by thick clouds as the 88-minute launch window ended, leaving mission controllers to reschedule the vehicle's upcoming flight.
Rivalry between Bezos' firm and Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been heating up in recent months.
Rescheduled Attempt
To relieve traffic in the skies during the US federal government shutdown, the aviation regulator is restricting private space launches starting the beginning of the week.
After scrubbing the mission, Blue Origin announced 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 EST.
Mission Objectives
Upon successful liftoff, the 322-foot New Glenn rocket will transport the US space agency's Escapade twin spacecraft to Mars, in an effort to examine the planet’s climate history with the long-term goal of sending people there.
Blue Origin’s launch will also act as a crucial trial of its ability to perform reusable rocket landing, which would prove a major advancement for the firm if successful.
Previous Flight
The rocket's first launch in January was marked as a achievement, as its payload reached space and successfully performed experiments.
But its first-stage booster, which was designed as recoverable, failed to make its touchdown on a platform in the ocean, and instead was lost during descent.
Recovery Efforts
For this new mission Blue Origin will try once more to recover the booster stage.
Thus far, only Musk’s company SpaceX has managed 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 proposals for its lunar exploration program, complaining that SpaceX was lagging behind.
The current administration has involved the administration push NASA to speed up its progress to launch astronauts to the Moon in competition against the Asian nation.
More rivalry 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 trailing behind.”
