Blue Origin, owned by entrepreneur Jeff Bezos, had to postpone the highly anticipated liftoff of its New Glenn rocket on the weekend due to unfavorable meteorological factors at Cape Canaveral.
Launch Delay Reasons
Precipitation and a technical problem on the ground led to initial delays, then came cumulus cloud cover as the 88-minute launch window closed, leaving mission controllers to push back the rocket’s planned second mission.
Rivalry between Bezos' firm and Musk's space company has been heating up in the past few months.
Rescheduled Attempt
To relieve traffic in the skies amid the government funding gap, the Federal Aviation Administration is restricting commercial rocket liftoffs starting Monday.
Following the cancellation of the mission, Blue Origin announced late Sunday that, working alongside the regulatory body, it was targeting another attempt as soon as Wednesday within a window of afternoon hours EST.
Mission Objectives
Upon successful liftoff, the 98-meter tall launch vehicle 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 eventual hope of human exploration.
Blue Origin’s launch will also serve as a key test of whether it can achieve booster recovery, which would prove a technical breakthrough for the firm if accomplished.
Previous Flight
The rocket's first launch in the start of the year was marked as a success, as its payload achieved orbit and successfully performed experiments.
But its main rocket section, which was designed as reusable, did not stick its landing on a platform in the ocean, and ended up destroyed during descent.
Recovery Efforts
In its second effort Blue Origin will make another attempt to recover the booster stage.
Until now, only SpaceX has achieved that feat.
Industry Competition
Rival firms of tycoons Musk and Bezos are locked in a private sector space competition that has grown more intense lately, as the space agency began accepting bids for its planned moon mission, noting that SpaceX was lagging behind.
The current administration has seen the administration push NASA to speed up its timeline to send a crewed mission to the Moon in competition against the Asian nation.
More rivalry between SpaceX and Blue Origin could “give us more choices with regard to launch.”
“More launches means more ideas in orbit,” an ex-agency official stated. “It can’t be a bad thing to have the competitor, even not in the lead.”
