The aerospace company, founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, was forced to postpone the highly anticipated launch of its powerful launch vehicle on Sunday due to adverse weather factors at the Florida launch site.
Mission Postponement Reasons
Precipitation and a ground system issue led to initial delays, then came cumulus cloud cover as the narrow time frame for launch ended, leaving mission controllers to reschedule the vehicle's upcoming flight.
Competition between Bezos' firm and Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been intensifying in the past few months.
New Launch Window
To ease traffic in the skies during the US federal government shutdown, the Federal Aviation Administration is limiting commercial rocket liftoffs from the beginning of the week.
After scrubbing the mission, Blue Origin announced late Sunday that, working alongside the FAA, it was targeting a new try as early as Wednesday within a time slot of 2.50pm to 4.17pm Eastern Standard time.
Mission Objectives
Upon successful liftoff, the 98-meter tall launch vehicle will carry the US space agency's two Mars-bound probes to the Red Planet, in an effort to examine the Martian atmospheric past with the eventual hope of sending people there.
Blue Origin’s launch will also serve as a crucial trial of whether it can achieve booster recovery, which would prove a technical breakthrough for the firm if successful.
Previous Flight
New Glenn’s inaugural flight in the start of the year was considered a achievement, as its payload achieved orbit and successfully performed experiments.
But its main rocket section, which was designed as recoverable, failed to make its touchdown on a platform in the Atlantic, and ended up destroyed during descent.
Landing Attempts
In its second effort the launch provider will make another attempt to recover the first stage.
Thus far, only SpaceX has managed that feat.
Industry Competition
The competing companies of billionaires Musk and Bezos are engaged in a commercial space race that recently escalated, as NASA opened up proposals for its planned moon mission, complaining that SpaceX was falling behind schedule.
The current administration has seen the government push the agency to speed up its progress to send a crewed mission to the Moon amid a race with the Asian nation.
Increased competition between SpaceX and Blue Origin could “expand our options with regard to liftoff.”
“Additional missions means greater innovation in space,” a former NASA chief technologist stated. “It isn't a negative to have Blue Origin, even not in the lead.”
