Blue Origin, founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, was forced to postpone the highly anticipated launch of its New Glenn rocket on Sunday due to adverse weather factors at Cape Canaveral.
Launch Delay Reasons
Precipitation and a ground system issue caused early setbacks, then came cumulus cloud cover as the narrow time frame for launch closed, leaving managers to reschedule the vehicle's upcoming flight.
Competition between Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been heating up in recent months.
New Launch Window
To ease airspace congestion amid the US federal government shutdown, the aviation regulator is restricting commercial rocket liftoffs from Monday.
After scrubbing the mission, Blue Origin said late Sunday that, in coordination with the FAA, it was targeting another attempt as early as Wednesday within a window of 2.50pm to 4.17pm Eastern Standard time.
Launch Goals
Upon successful liftoff, the 322-foot New Glenn rocket will carry the US space agency's Escapade twin spacecraft to Mars, to examine the Martian atmospheric past with the long-term goal of human exploration.
The mission will also act as a crucial trial of its ability to perform booster recovery, which would represent a technical breakthrough for the company if successful.
Previous Flight
New Glenn’s inaugural flight in January was marked as a success, as its cargo achieved orbit and successfully performed experiments.
But its main rocket section, which was designed as recoverable, did not stick its landing on a platform in the ocean, and ended up destroyed during descent.
Landing Attempts
For this new mission the launch provider will try once more to land the booster stage.
Until now, only Musk’s company SpaceX has achieved that feat.
Industry Competition
Rival firms of tycoons Bezos and Musk are locked in a private sector space competition that recently escalated, as the space agency began accepting bids for its lunar exploration program, complaining that one company was lagging behind.
The current administration has involved the administration pile pressure on the agency to speed up its timeline to send a crewed mission to the lunar surface in competition against China.
Increased competition between SpaceX and Blue Origin could “give us more choices with regard to liftoff.”
“Additional missions means more ideas in orbit,” a former NASA chief technologist stated. “It isn't a bad thing to have Blue Origin, even not in the lead.”
