The aerospace company, founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, was forced to postpone the highly anticipated launch of its powerful launch vehicle on Sunday due to adverse meteorological factors at the Florida launch site.
Mission Postponement Reasons
Precipitation and a technical problem on the ground caused early setbacks, followed by cumulus cloud cover as the narrow time frame for launch ended, forcing mission controllers to push back the vehicle's upcoming flight.
Competition between Bezos' firm and Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been heating up in recent months.
New Launch Window
To relieve traffic in the skies during the government funding gap, the Federal Aviation Administration is restricting commercial rocket liftoffs from the beginning of the week.
After scrubbing the mission, Blue Origin announced late Sunday that, working alongside 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.
Launch Goals
When it eventually launches, the 322-foot New Glenn rocket will transport the US space agency's Escapade twin spacecraft to the Red Planet, in an effort to examine the planet’s climate history with the eventual hope of human exploration.
The mission will also serve as a crucial trial of whether it can achieve reusable rocket landing, which would represent a technical breakthrough for the company if successful.
Earlier Mission
New Glenn’s inaugural flight in the start of the year was considered a success, as its cargo reached space and successfully performed experiments.
But its first-stage booster, which was designed as reusable, failed to make its landing on a ocean-based target in the ocean, and instead was lost during the return phase.
Landing Attempts
In its second effort Blue Origin will make another attempt to land the booster stage.
Until now, only Musk’s company SpaceX has achieved that accomplishment.
Industry Competition
Rival firms of tycoons Bezos and Musk are engaged in a private sector space competition that recently escalated, as NASA opened up bids for its lunar exploration program, noting that one company was lagging behind.
The current administration has seen the government pile pressure on NASA to speed up its progress to launch astronauts to the Moon amid a race with the Asian nation.
Increased competition between SpaceX and Blue Origin could “give us more choices with regard to liftoff.”
“More launches means more ideas in space,” a former NASA chief technologist said. “It can’t be a bad thing to have Blue Origin, even trailing behind.”
