The aerospace company, founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, was forced to postpone the highly anticipated liftoff of its powerful launch vehicle on the weekend due to adverse weather conditions at Cape Canaveral.
Mission Postponement Causes
Rainfall and a ground system issue led to early setbacks, followed by cumulus cloud cover as the 88-minute launch window ended, leaving mission controllers to push back the rocket’s planned second mission.
Competition between Bezos' firm and Musk's space company has been intensifying in recent months.
New Launch Window
To ease traffic in the skies amid the government funding gap, the Federal Aviation Administration is restricting private space launches from the beginning of the week.
After scrubbing the mission, Blue Origin said late Sunday that, working alongside the FAA, it was aiming for another attempt as early as Wednesday within a window of 2.50pm to 4.17pm EST.
Launch Goals
Upon successful liftoff, the 322-foot tall launch vehicle will carry NASA’s two Mars-bound probes to the Red Planet, to examine the Martian atmospheric past with the long-term goal of human exploration.
The mission will also act as a key test of whether it can achieve booster recovery, which would prove a technical breakthrough for the company if successful.
Earlier Mission
New Glenn’s inaugural flight in the start of the year was marked as a success, as its cargo reached space and successfully performed experiments.
But its first-stage booster, which was meant to be reusable, did not stick its landing on a ocean-based target in the ocean, and ended up destroyed during the return phase.
Landing Attempts
For this new mission the launch provider will try once more to recover the booster stage.
Until now, only SpaceX has managed that accomplishment.
Space Race
Rival firms of tycoons Bezos and Musk are locked in a private sector space competition that recently escalated, as the space agency began accepting proposals for its lunar exploration program, noting that one company was falling behind schedule.
The current administration has involved the government pile pressure on NASA to speed up its timeline to send a crewed mission to the Moon in competition against the Asian nation.
More rivalry between the two firms could “give us more choices with regard to launch.”
“Additional missions 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.”
