Blue Origin, founded by entrepreneur Jeff Bezos, had to postpone the eagerly awaited launch of its New Glenn rocket on Sunday because of adverse weather factors at Cape Canaveral.
Mission Postponement Causes
Precipitation and a technical problem on the ground caused early setbacks, then came cumulus cloud cover as the 88-minute launch window closed, leaving managers to push back the vehicle's upcoming flight.
Rivalry between Bezos' firm and Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been intensifying in the past few months.
New Launch Window
To relieve traffic in the skies during the government funding gap, the Federal Aviation Administration is restricting private space launches starting Monday.
After scrubbing the mission, Blue Origin said late Sunday that, working alongside the regulatory body, it was targeting another attempt as early as Wednesday within a time slot of afternoon hours EST.
Launch Goals
When it eventually launches, the 98-meter tall launch vehicle will carry the US space agency's Escapade twin spacecraft to the Red Planet, to examine the planet’s climate history with the long-term goal of human exploration.
The mission 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.
Previous Flight
The rocket's first launch in January was marked as a success, as its payload reached space and successfully performed tests.
But its first-stage booster, which was designed as recoverable, did not stick its landing on a platform in the Atlantic, and ended up destroyed during the return phase.
Recovery Efforts
For this new mission the launch provider 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 billionaires Musk and Bezos are engaged in a private sector space competition that has grown more intense lately, as NASA began accepting proposals for its lunar exploration program, complaining that SpaceX was lagging behind.
Donald Trump’s second term has seen the administration pile pressure on NASA to speed up its timeline to launch astronauts to the lunar surface in competition against China.
Increased competition between SpaceX and Blue Origin could “give us more choices with regard to launch.”
“More launches means more ideas in space,” a former NASA chief technologist said. “It can’t be a negative to have Blue Origin, even not in the lead.”
