The aerospace company, founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, was forced to postpone the highly anticipated launch of its New Glenn rocket on Sunday because of unfavorable weather factors at Cape Canaveral.
Launch Delay Reasons
Precipitation and a ground system issue caused early setbacks, followed by cumulus cloud cover as the narrow time frame for launch ended, forcing mission controllers to reschedule the vehicle's upcoming flight.
Competition between Bezos' firm and Musk's space company has been intensifying in recent months.
New Launch Window
To ease traffic in the skies during the US federal government shutdown, the Federal Aviation Administration is limiting commercial rocket liftoffs from the beginning of the week.
After scrubbing the mission, the company said on Sunday evening that, working alongside the regulatory body, it was aiming for a new try as soon as midweek within a window of afternoon hours EST.
Launch Goals
Upon successful liftoff, the 322-foot tall launch vehicle will transport NASA’s Escapade twin spacecraft to the Red Planet, in an effort to study the planet’s climate history with the long-term goal of sending people there.
Blue Origin’s launch will also serve as a key test of its ability to perform reusable rocket landing, which would represent a technical breakthrough for the company if accomplished.
Previous Flight
The rocket's first launch in January was marked as a success, as its cargo achieved orbit and successfully performed tests.
But its main rocket section, which was meant to be recoverable, failed to make its landing on a ocean-based target in the ocean, and ended up destroyed during descent.
Landing Attempts
For this new mission Blue Origin will try once more to recover the booster stage.
Thus far, only Musk’s company SpaceX has achieved that accomplishment.
Space Race
The competing companies of billionaires Bezos and Musk are engaged in a commercial space race that recently escalated, as the space agency opened up proposals for its lunar exploration program, complaining that one company was lagging behind.
The current administration has seen the government push the agency to speed up its progress to launch astronauts to the Moon amid a race with the Asian nation.
Increased competition between the two firms could “give us more choices 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.”
