The aerospace company, founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, was forced to postpone the eagerly awaited liftoff of its powerful launch vehicle on Sunday because of adverse meteorological conditions at the Florida launch site.
Mission Postponement Reasons
Precipitation and a technical problem on the ground caused early setbacks, then came cumulus cloud cover as the narrow time frame for launch closed, forcing managers to push back the rocket’s planned second mission.
Rivalry between Bezos' firm and Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been heating up in recent months.
Rescheduled Attempt
To ease traffic in the skies amid the government funding gap, the Federal Aviation Administration is limiting commercial rocket liftoffs starting Monday.
After scrubbing the mission, Blue Origin said late Sunday that, in coordination with the FAA, it was aiming for a new try as early as midweek within a time slot of afternoon hours Eastern Standard time.
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 long-term goal of sending people there.
Blue Origin’s launch will also act as a crucial trial of its ability to perform reusable rocket landing, which would represent a major advancement for the firm if accomplished.
Previous Flight
New Glenn’s inaugural flight in the start of the year was marked as a success, as its payload reached space and successfully performed experiments.
But its first-stage booster, which was designed as reusable, did not stick its touchdown on a ocean-based target in the Atlantic, and instead was lost during the return phase.
Landing Attempts
In its second effort Blue Origin will make another attempt to recover the booster stage.
Thus far, only SpaceX has achieved that accomplishment.
Industry Competition
The competing companies of billionaires Musk and Bezos are locked in a commercial space race that recently escalated, as NASA began accepting proposals for its lunar exploration program, noting that one company was falling behind schedule.
The current administration has seen the government pile pressure on NASA to accelerate its progress to send a crewed mission to the lunar surface amid a race with China.
Increased competition between SpaceX and Blue Origin could “give us more choices with regard to launch.”
“More launches means more ideas in orbit,” a former NASA chief technologist stated. “It can’t be a bad thing to have Blue Origin, even not in the lead.”
