The aerospace company, owned by entrepreneur Jeff Bezos, was forced to postpone the eagerly awaited launch of its New Glenn rocket on Sunday because of unfavorable meteorological factors at the Florida launch site.
Launch Delay Reasons
Precipitation and a ground system issue led to early setbacks, then came cumulus cloud cover as the 88-minute launch window closed, leaving managers to push back the rocket’s planned second mission.
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 limiting commercial rocket liftoffs from the beginning of the week.
After scrubbing the mission, Blue Origin announced on Sunday evening that, in coordination with the FAA, it was targeting another attempt as soon as Wednesday within a window of 2.50pm to 4.17pm EST.
Launch Goals
When it eventually launches, the 98-meter New Glenn rocket will carry NASA’s two Mars-bound probes to the Red Planet, to study the Martian atmospheric past with the eventual hope of sending people there.
The mission will also act as a key test of whether it can achieve booster recovery, which would represent a technical breakthrough for the firm if successful.
Earlier Mission
New Glenn’s inaugural flight in the start of the year was marked as a achievement, as its cargo achieved orbit and successfully performed experiments.
But its main rocket section, which was designed as reusable, failed to make its touchdown on a platform in the ocean, and instead was lost during descent.
Recovery Efforts
In its second effort Blue Origin will try once more to recover the booster stage.
Thus far, only Musk’s company SpaceX has achieved that feat.
Space Race
Rival firms of billionaires Musk and Bezos are engaged in a private sector space competition that recently escalated, as the space agency opened up bids for its planned moon mission, complaining that one company was falling behind schedule.
The current administration has involved the administration pile pressure on NASA to accelerate its progress to launch astronauts to the Moon in competition against the Asian nation.
More rivalry between the two firms could “give us more choices with regard to launch.”
“More launches means greater innovation in space,” a former NASA chief technologist stated. “It can’t be a bad thing to have the competitor, even not in the lead.”
