Blue Origin, founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, had to delay the highly anticipated liftoff of its New Glenn rocket on Sunday due to unfavorable weather conditions at the Florida launch site.
Mission Postponement Causes
Rainfall and a technical problem on the ground caused initial delays, followed by cumulus cloud cover as the narrow time frame for launch closed, leaving managers to push back the rocket’s planned second mission.
Competition between Bezos' firm and Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been intensifying in the past few months.
Rescheduled Attempt
To ease airspace congestion during the government funding gap, the aviation regulator is restricting commercial rocket liftoffs starting Monday.
Following the cancellation of the launch, Blue Origin said late Sunday that, working alongside the regulatory body, it was targeting another attempt as soon as midweek within a window of afternoon hours Eastern Standard time.
Mission Objectives
Upon successful liftoff, the 322-foot New Glenn rocket will carry the US space agency's Escapade twin spacecraft to Mars, to examine the planet’s climate history with the long-term goal of human exploration.
Blue Origin’s launch will also act as a key test of whether it can achieve booster recovery, which would represent a technical breakthrough for the company if accomplished.
Earlier Mission
New Glenn’s inaugural flight in January was marked as a achievement, as its cargo achieved orbit and successfully performed tests.
But its main rocket section, which was meant to be recoverable, did not stick its landing on a platform in the ocean, and ended up destroyed during descent.
Landing Attempts
For this new mission Blue Origin will make another attempt to recover the first stage.
Until now, only Musk’s company SpaceX has achieved that feat.
Industry Competition
The competing companies of tycoons Bezos and Musk are locked in a commercial space race that recently escalated, as the space agency opened up bids for its lunar exploration program, complaining that SpaceX was lagging behind.
The current administration has seen the administration push NASA to accelerate its timeline to launch astronauts to the lunar surface in competition against the Asian nation.
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 stated. “It can’t be a negative to have Blue Origin, even not in the lead.”
