Blue Origin, owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, had to postpone the highly anticipated launch of its powerful launch vehicle on Sunday because of unfavorable meteorological conditions at the Florida launch site.
Mission Postponement Causes
Precipitation and a technical problem on the ground led to initial delays, then came thick clouds 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 the past few months.
New Launch Window
To relieve traffic in the skies during the government funding gap, the aviation regulator is restricting commercial rocket liftoffs from Monday.
Following the cancellation of the launch, the company announced late Sunday that, in coordination with the regulatory body, it was aiming for another attempt as soon as Wednesday within a time slot of 2.50pm to 4.17pm Eastern Standard time.
Mission Objectives
Upon successful liftoff, the 322-foot New Glenn rocket will transport the US space agency's Escapade twin spacecraft to the Red Planet, in an effort to examine the planet’s climate history with the long-term goal of sending people there.
Blue Origin’s launch will also serve as a crucial trial of whether it can achieve reusable rocket landing, which would prove a technical breakthrough for the firm if successful.
Earlier Mission
New Glenn’s inaugural flight in January was marked as a success, as its payload achieved orbit and completed experiments.
But its main rocket section, which was meant to be recoverable, did not stick its landing on a ocean-based target in the ocean, and ended up destroyed during the return phase.
Recovery Efforts
In its second effort Blue Origin will try once more to recover the booster stage.
Until now, only SpaceX has achieved that accomplishment.
Space Race
Rival firms of tycoons Musk and Bezos are engaged in a private sector space competition that has grown more intense lately, as the space agency opened up proposals for its planned moon mission, complaining that SpaceX was lagging behind.
The current administration has involved the government push NASA to accelerate its progress to send a crewed mission to the Moon in competition against China.
More rivalry between the two firms could “give us more choices with regard to launch.”
“More launches means more ideas in orbit,” an ex-agency official said. “It isn't a bad thing to have the competitor, even not in the lead.”
