Blue Origin, founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, had to postpone the eagerly awaited launch of its powerful launch vehicle on Sunday because of adverse meteorological factors at Cape Canaveral.
Mission Postponement Causes
Rainfall and a ground system issue caused early setbacks, followed by cumulus cloud cover as the narrow time frame for launch ended, leaving mission controllers to reschedule the rocket’s planned second mission.
Competition between Blue Origin and Musk's space company has been heating up in the past few months.
New Launch Window
To ease airspace congestion amid the government funding gap, the aviation regulator is restricting commercial rocket liftoffs from the beginning of the week.
After scrubbing the launch, Blue Origin announced on Sunday evening that, working alongside the FAA, it was targeting a new try as soon as Wednesday within a time slot of afternoon hours Eastern Standard time.
Mission Objectives
Upon successful liftoff, the 322-foot tall launch vehicle will transport the US space agency's two Mars-bound probes to the Red Planet, in an effort to study the planet’s climate history with the eventual hope of human exploration.
The mission will also serve as a key test of whether it can achieve booster recovery, which would represent a technical breakthrough for the firm if accomplished.
Previous Flight
New Glenn’s inaugural flight in the start of the year was marked as a success, as its cargo reached space and completed experiments.
But its first-stage booster, which was meant to be recoverable, did not stick its touchdown on a ocean-based target in the ocean, and ended up destroyed during the return phase.
Recovery Efforts
For this new mission the launch provider will try once more to recover the booster stage.
Thus far, only Musk’s company SpaceX has managed that accomplishment.
Industry Competition
The competing companies of billionaires Bezos and Musk are locked in a private sector space competition that recently escalated, as NASA opened up bids for its planned moon mission, complaining that SpaceX was falling behind schedule.
Donald Trump’s second term has seen the administration push NASA to speed up its timeline to launch astronauts to the Moon amid a race with the Asian nation.
More rivalry between the two firms could “expand our options with regard to liftoff.”
“More launches means greater innovation in orbit,” an ex-agency official stated. “It can’t be a bad thing to have the competitor, even not in the lead.”
