The aerospace company, founded by entrepreneur Jeff Bezos, had to postpone the eagerly awaited launch of its powerful launch vehicle on Sunday because of unfavorable weather conditions at Cape Canaveral.
Launch Delay Causes
Rainfall and a technical problem on the ground led to early setbacks, then came thick clouds as the 88-minute launch window closed, leaving managers to push back the rocket’s planned second mission.
Competition 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 during the US federal government shutdown, the aviation regulator is restricting commercial rocket liftoffs from Monday.
After scrubbing the launch, Blue Origin announced late Sunday that, in coordination with the regulatory body, it was aiming for a new try as soon as Wednesday within a time slot of 2.50pm to 4.17pm EST.
Launch Goals
When it eventually launches, the 322-foot New Glenn rocket will carry the US space agency's Escapade twin spacecraft to Mars, to study the planet’s climate history with the long-term goal of human exploration.
The mission will also act as a crucial trial of whether it can achieve reusable rocket landing, which would prove a technical breakthrough for the company if successful.
Previous Flight
New Glenn’s inaugural flight in January was marked as a achievement, as its payload reached space and successfully performed experiments.
But its first-stage booster, which was meant to be reusable, did not stick its touchdown on a ocean-based target in the ocean, and instead was lost during descent.
Landing Attempts
In its second effort the launch provider will make another attempt to recover the booster stage.
Until now, only SpaceX has achieved that accomplishment.
Space Race
Rival firms of tycoons Bezos and Musk are locked in a commercial space race that recently escalated, as NASA began accepting proposals for its planned moon mission, noting that SpaceX was falling behind schedule.
The current administration has seen the government push NASA to accelerate its timeline to send a crewed mission to the Moon in competition against China.
Increased competition between the two firms could “give us more choices with regard to launch.”
“Additional missions 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.”
