The aerospace company, founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, had to delay the eagerly awaited launch of its New Glenn rocket on Sunday because of adverse weather factors at Cape Canaveral.
Launch Delay Reasons
Rainfall and a ground system issue led to early setbacks, then came cumulus cloud cover as the narrow time frame for launch ended, forcing managers to push back the vehicle's upcoming flight.
Rivalry between Bezos' firm and Musk's space company has been intensifying in the past few months.
Rescheduled Attempt
To ease airspace congestion amid the government funding gap, the aviation regulator is limiting commercial rocket liftoffs from Monday.
After scrubbing the launch, Blue Origin said late Sunday that, working alongside the regulatory body, it was targeting a new try as early as Wednesday within a time slot of 2.50pm to 4.17pm EST.
Mission Objectives
When it eventually launches, the 322-foot tall launch vehicle will carry NASA’s Escapade twin spacecraft to the Red Planet, to study the planet’s climate history with the eventual hope of sending people there.
Blue Origin’s launch will also act as a key test of its ability to perform booster recovery, which would represent a major advancement for the company if successful.
Earlier Mission
The rocket's first launch in the start of the year was marked as a success, as its payload achieved orbit and successfully performed experiments.
But its first-stage booster, which was designed as recoverable, did not stick its landing on a platform in the ocean, and instead was lost during descent.
Landing Attempts
In its second effort the launch provider will try once more to land the booster stage.
Until now, only SpaceX has managed that accomplishment.
Space Race
Rival firms of billionaires Bezos and Musk are locked in a private sector space competition that recently escalated, as the space agency opened up bids for its planned moon mission, complaining that SpaceX was falling behind schedule.
The current administration has involved the administration pile pressure on the agency to accelerate its progress to send a crewed mission to the Moon in competition against the Asian nation.
Increased competition between SpaceX and Blue Origin could “give us more choices with regard to launch.”
“More launches means more ideas in orbit,” a former NASA chief technologist stated. “It isn't a negative to have Blue Origin, even trailing behind.”
