The aerospace company, founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, had to delay the eagerly awaited launch of its New Glenn rocket on Sunday due to unfavorable weather conditions at Cape Canaveral.
Launch Delay Causes
Precipitation and a technical problem on the ground led to early setbacks, followed by thick clouds as the narrow time frame for launch ended, leaving mission controllers to push back the rocket’s planned second mission.
Competition between Bezos' firm and Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been intensifying in the past few months.
New Launch Window
To relieve airspace congestion amid the government funding gap, the Federal Aviation Administration is restricting commercial rocket liftoffs starting the beginning of the week.
Following the cancellation of the launch, the company announced late Sunday that, working alongside the regulatory body, it was aiming for a new try as early as Wednesday within a time slot of afternoon hours Eastern Standard time.
Mission Objectives
Upon successful liftoff, the 98-meter New Glenn rocket will carry NASA’s two Mars-bound probes to the Red Planet, to examine the planet’s climate history with the long-term goal of sending people there.
Blue Origin’s launch will also act as a key test of its ability to perform booster recovery, which would prove a major advancement for the company if successful.
Previous Flight
New Glenn’s inaugural flight in the start of the year was marked as a success, as its cargo reached space and successfully performed tests.
But its first-stage booster, which was designed as recoverable, failed to make its landing on a platform in the ocean, and instead was lost during descent.
Recovery Efforts
For this new mission Blue Origin will try once more to recover the booster stage.
Until now, only SpaceX has achieved that feat.
Space Race
Rival firms of tycoons Bezos and Musk are engaged in a commercial space race that recently escalated, as the space agency opened up bids for its lunar exploration program, complaining that one company was lagging behind.
Donald Trump’s second term has involved the government push the agency to speed up its timeline 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,” an ex-agency official stated. “It can’t be a bad thing to have the competitor, even trailing behind.”
