The aerospace company, founded by entrepreneur Jeff Bezos, was forced to postpone the highly anticipated launch of its New Glenn rocket on Sunday due to unfavorable weather factors at Cape Canaveral.
Launch Delay Reasons
Rainfall and a ground system issue caused early setbacks, then came cumulus cloud cover as the 88-minute launch window ended, forcing managers to push back the rocket’s planned second mission.
Rivalry between Blue Origin and Musk's space company has been heating up in the past few months.
Rescheduled Attempt
To relieve traffic in the skies amid the US federal government shutdown, the aviation regulator is restricting commercial rocket liftoffs from Monday.
After scrubbing the launch, the company said on Sunday evening that, in coordination with the regulatory body, it was aiming for another attempt as early as midweek within a time slot of afternoon hours EST.
Launch Goals
Upon successful liftoff, the 98-meter New Glenn rocket will carry the US space agency's Escapade twin spacecraft to Mars, in an effort to examine the planet’s climate history with the eventual hope of human exploration.
The mission will also serve as a key test of its ability to perform reusable rocket landing, which would prove a technical breakthrough for the company if accomplished.
Previous Flight
The rocket's first launch 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 meant to be reusable, failed to make its touchdown on a platform in the ocean, and instead was lost during descent.
Recovery Efforts
For this new mission the launch provider will try once more to recover the booster stage.
Thus far, only SpaceX has achieved that feat.
Industry Competition
The competing companies of billionaires Bezos and Musk are engaged in a commercial space race that recently escalated, as the space agency opened up proposals for its lunar exploration program, noting that one company was falling behind schedule.
The current administration has involved the administration push NASA to speed up its progress to send a crewed mission to the Moon amid a race with the Asian nation.
More rivalry between SpaceX and Blue Origin could “expand our options with regard to liftoff.”
“Additional missions means greater innovation in orbit,” a former NASA chief technologist said. “It isn't a negative to have Blue Origin, even not in the lead.”
