The aerospace company, owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, had to delay the eagerly awaited launch of its powerful launch vehicle on Sunday due to adverse meteorological factors at the Florida launch site.
Mission Postponement Reasons
Rainfall and a ground system issue caused early setbacks, then came cumulus cloud cover as the 88-minute launch window closed, leaving mission controllers to push back the vehicle's upcoming flight.
Rivalry between Bezos' firm and Musk's space company has been heating up in recent months.
New Launch Window
To relieve traffic in the skies amid the government funding gap, the aviation regulator is limiting commercial rocket liftoffs from Monday.
After scrubbing the mission, the company announced late Sunday that, working alongside the regulatory body, it was targeting another attempt as soon as midweek within a window of 2.50pm to 4.17pm EST.
Mission Objectives
When it eventually launches, the 98-meter New Glenn rocket will carry 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.
Blue Origin’s launch will also serve as a crucial trial of its ability to perform reusable rocket landing, which would represent a major advancement for the firm if successful.
Previous Flight
New Glenn’s inaugural flight in January was marked as a achievement, as its payload achieved orbit and completed experiments.
But its main rocket section, which was designed as recoverable, failed to make its landing on a platform in the Atlantic, and instead was lost during the return phase.
Landing Attempts
For this new mission the launch provider will try once more to recover the first stage.
Until now, only Musk’s company SpaceX has managed that feat.
Industry Competition
The competing companies of billionaires Bezos and Musk are engaged in a private sector space competition that has grown more intense lately, as the space agency opened up bids for its planned moon mission, complaining that SpaceX was falling behind schedule.
The current administration has involved the government pile pressure on NASA to accelerate its progress to send a crewed mission to the Moon amid a race with China.
Increased competition between SpaceX and Blue Origin 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 the competitor, even not in the lead.”
