Blue Origin, founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, had to postpone the highly anticipated liftoff of its powerful launch vehicle on Sunday because of adverse meteorological conditions at Cape Canaveral.
Mission Postponement Reasons
Rainfall and a technical problem on the ground led to early setbacks, followed by cumulus cloud cover as the narrow time frame for launch ended, leaving managers to push back the vehicle's upcoming flight.
Competition between Bezos' firm and Musk's space company has been heating up in recent months.
Rescheduled Attempt
To ease traffic in the skies during the government funding gap, the Federal Aviation Administration is limiting commercial rocket liftoffs starting Monday.
Following the cancellation of the mission, Blue Origin announced late Sunday that, in coordination with the regulatory body, it was aiming for another attempt as soon as midweek within a window of 2.50pm to 4.17pm EST.
Mission Objectives
Upon successful liftoff, the 98-meter New Glenn rocket will transport the US space agency's Escapade twin spacecraft to the Red Planet, in an effort to study the planet’s climate history with the eventual hope of human exploration.
The mission will also serve as a crucial trial of whether it can achieve reusable rocket landing, which would represent a major advancement for the company if successful.
Previous Flight
The rocket's first launch in January was marked as a achievement, as its cargo reached space and completed experiments.
But its first-stage booster, which was meant to be reusable, failed to make its touchdown on a platform in the ocean, and ended up destroyed during the return phase.
Landing Attempts
For this new mission the launch provider will try once more to recover the first stage.
Thus far, only Musk’s company SpaceX has achieved that feat.
Industry Competition
The competing companies of billionaires Bezos and Musk are engaged in a private sector space competition that has grown more intense lately, as the space agency began accepting bids for its lunar exploration program, noting that SpaceX was falling behind schedule.
The current administration has seen the administration pile pressure on NASA to speed up its progress to send a crewed mission to the Moon in competition against China.
Increased competition between the two firms could “give us more choices with regard to launch.”
“More launches means more ideas in orbit,” an ex-agency official said. “It can’t be a negative to have Blue Origin, even not in the lead.”
