Blue Origin, founded by entrepreneur Jeff Bezos, had to postpone the highly anticipated liftoff of its New Glenn rocket on the weekend because of adverse meteorological factors at the Florida launch site.
Launch Delay Causes
Rainfall and a technical problem on the ground caused initial delays, followed by cumulus cloud cover as the 88-minute launch window closed, leaving mission controllers to reschedule the rocket’s planned second mission.
Competition between Bezos' firm and Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been heating up in recent months.
Rescheduled Attempt
To ease airspace congestion during the US federal government shutdown, the Federal Aviation Administration is restricting private space launches starting Monday.
Following the cancellation of the mission, Blue Origin said late Sunday that, in coordination with the regulatory body, it was aiming for another attempt as early as midweek within a window of afternoon hours EST.
Mission Objectives
Upon successful liftoff, the 322-foot tall launch vehicle will transport NASA’s Escapade twin spacecraft to the Red Planet, in an effort to examine the planet’s climate history with the eventual hope of human exploration.
Blue Origin’s launch will also serve as a key test of its ability to perform booster recovery, which would represent a technical breakthrough for the company if accomplished.
Previous Flight
New Glenn’s inaugural flight in January was considered a success, as its payload reached space and successfully performed experiments.
But its first-stage booster, which was designed as recoverable, failed to make its touchdown on a platform in the ocean, and ended up destroyed during descent.
Landing Attempts
For this new mission Blue Origin will try once more to land the first stage.
Until now, only SpaceX has managed that accomplishment.
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, noting that SpaceX was lagging behind.
The current administration has seen the administration push NASA to accelerate its progress to send a crewed mission to the Moon amid a race with the Asian nation.
More rivalry between the two firms could “give us more choices with regard to launch.”
“Additional missions means greater innovation in orbit,” a former NASA chief technologist said. “It isn't a negative to have Blue Origin, even trailing behind.”
