Blue Origin, founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, had to postpone the highly anticipated liftoff of its powerful launch vehicle on the weekend due to unfavorable meteorological factors at the Florida launch site.
Mission Postponement Reasons
Rainfall and a technical problem on the ground caused early setbacks, followed by cumulus cloud cover as the narrow time frame for launch ended, leaving mission controllers to reschedule the vehicle's upcoming flight.
Competition between Blue Origin and Musk's space company has been heating up in the past few months.
Rescheduled Attempt
To ease traffic in the skies amid the government funding gap, the Federal Aviation Administration is restricting commercial rocket liftoffs from the beginning of the week.
Following the cancellation of the launch, Blue Origin said late Sunday that, working alongside the FAA, it was targeting a new try as early as midweek within a time slot of 2.50pm to 4.17pm Eastern Standard time.
Launch Goals
When it eventually launches, the 98-meter tall launch vehicle will transport NASA’s two Mars-bound probes to Mars, to examine the planet’s climate history with the long-term goal of sending people there.
The mission will also serve as a crucial trial of whether it can achieve booster recovery, which would prove a major advancement for the company if successful.
Earlier Mission
New Glenn’s inaugural flight in January was marked as a achievement, as its payload reached space and completed experiments.
But its main rocket section, which was meant to be reusable, did not stick its touchdown on a platform in the Atlantic, and instead was lost during the return phase.
Landing Attempts
For this new mission Blue Origin will make another attempt to recover the booster stage.
Until now, only Musk’s company SpaceX has managed that accomplishment.
Industry Competition
The competing companies of tycoons Musk and Bezos are engaged in a commercial space race that recently escalated, as NASA opened up proposals for its lunar exploration program, complaining that SpaceX was lagging behind.
The current administration has seen the administration push NASA to speed up its progress to launch astronauts to the Moon amid a race with China.
More rivalry between the two firms could “expand our options 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.”
