Blue Origin, founded by entrepreneur Jeff Bezos, had to postpone the highly anticipated liftoff of its New Glenn rocket on Sunday due to adverse meteorological factors at Cape Canaveral.
Mission Postponement Reasons
Precipitation and a ground system issue led to initial delays, followed by cumulus cloud cover as the narrow time frame for launch closed, leaving managers to push back the rocket’s planned second mission.
Competition between Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been intensifying in the past few months.
Rescheduled Attempt
To relieve traffic in the skies amid the US federal government shutdown, the aviation regulator is limiting commercial rocket liftoffs from the beginning of the week.
Following the cancellation of the mission, Blue Origin said late Sunday that, in coordination with the FAA, it was targeting another attempt as soon as midweek within a window of 2.50pm to 4.17pm Eastern Standard time.
Mission Objectives
Upon successful liftoff, the 322-foot tall launch vehicle will transport the US space agency's Escapade twin spacecraft to Mars, in an effort to study the Martian atmospheric past with the eventual hope of human exploration.
Blue Origin’s launch will also act as a crucial trial of whether it can achieve booster recovery, which would prove a technical breakthrough for the company if accomplished.
Earlier Mission
The rocket's first launch in the start of the year was marked as a success, as its payload reached space 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 descent.
Landing Attempts
For this new mission the launch provider will make another attempt to recover the first stage.
Until now, only Musk’s company SpaceX has achieved that accomplishment.
Industry Competition
The competing companies 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 planned moon mission, noting that SpaceX was falling behind schedule.
Donald Trump’s second term has involved the government push the agency to accelerate its timeline to send a crewed mission to the lunar surface in competition against the Asian nation.
More rivalry between the two firms could “expand our options with regard to liftoff.”
“More launches means greater innovation in orbit,” a former NASA chief technologist said. “It can’t be a negative to have the competitor, even trailing behind.”
