The aerospace company, founded by entrepreneur Jeff Bezos, was forced to delay the highly anticipated liftoff of its powerful launch vehicle on Sunday because of adverse weather conditions at the Florida launch site.
Mission Postponement Causes
Precipitation and a technical problem on the ground led to early setbacks, then came thick clouds as the narrow time frame for launch ended, forcing mission controllers to push back the vehicle's upcoming flight.
Competition between Bezos' firm and Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been intensifying in the past few months.
New Launch Window
To ease airspace congestion during the government funding gap, the aviation regulator is limiting private space launches starting Monday.
After scrubbing the mission, Blue Origin announced on Sunday evening that, in coordination with the FAA, it was aiming for another attempt as soon as midweek within a window of afternoon hours EST.
Mission Objectives
Upon successful liftoff, the 98-meter New Glenn rocket will carry the US space agency's Escapade twin spacecraft to the Red Planet, to study 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 reusable rocket landing, which would represent a technical breakthrough for the company if accomplished.
Earlier Mission
The rocket's first launch in January was marked as a achievement, as its payload reached space and successfully performed experiments.
But its first-stage booster, which was meant to be recoverable, did not stick its landing on a platform in the Atlantic, and instead was lost during descent.
Recovery Efforts
For this new mission Blue Origin will make another attempt to recover the booster stage.
Until now, only SpaceX has managed that feat.
Industry Competition
The competing companies of billionaires Bezos and Musk are locked in a commercial space race that has grown more intense lately, as the space agency opened up bids for its lunar exploration program, noting that SpaceX was lagging behind.
The current administration has seen the administration pile pressure on NASA to speed up its progress to launch astronauts to the Moon amid a race with the Asian nation.
Increased competition between SpaceX and Blue Origin could “give us more choices with regard to launch.”
“Additional missions means greater innovation in space,” a former NASA chief technologist stated. “It isn't a negative to have the competitor, even trailing behind.”
