The aerospace company, owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, had to postpone the highly anticipated liftoff of its New Glenn rocket on Sunday due to unfavorable weather factors at Cape Canaveral.
Mission Postponement Causes
Rainfall and a ground system issue caused initial delays, followed by cumulus cloud cover as the narrow time frame for launch 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.
New Launch Window
To relieve airspace congestion amid the government funding gap, the aviation regulator is restricting commercial rocket liftoffs starting the beginning of the week.
Following the cancellation of the launch, Blue Origin announced late Sunday that, in coordination with the regulatory body, it was targeting another attempt as soon as Wednesday within a time slot of 2.50pm to 4.17pm Eastern Standard time.
Mission Objectives
When it eventually launches, the 322-foot New Glenn rocket will carry NASA’s two Mars-bound probes to Mars, to examine the planet’s climate history with the long-term goal of human exploration.
Blue Origin’s launch will also serve as a key test of its ability to perform booster recovery, which would prove a technical breakthrough for the firm if accomplished.
Earlier Mission
The rocket's first launch in the start of the year was marked as a achievement, as its payload achieved orbit and successfully performed tests.
But its first-stage booster, which was designed as recoverable, failed to make its touchdown on a ocean-based target in the Atlantic, and ended up destroyed during descent.
Landing Attempts
For this new mission the launch provider will try once more to recover the first stage.
Thus far, only Musk’s company SpaceX has achieved that accomplishment.
Industry Competition
Rival firms of billionaires Musk and Bezos are engaged 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 involved the government pile pressure on the agency to speed up its progress to send a crewed mission to the Moon amid a race with China.
Increased competition between the two firms could “expand our options with regard to launch.”
“Additional missions means more ideas in space,” an ex-agency official said. “It can’t be a bad thing to have Blue Origin, even not in the lead.”
