The aerospace company, founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, was forced to delay the highly anticipated liftoff of its powerful launch vehicle on Sunday due to adverse weather conditions at Cape Canaveral.
Launch Delay Reasons
Precipitation and a technical problem on the ground led to early setbacks, followed by cumulus cloud cover as the narrow time frame for launch ended, leaving mission controllers to push back the vehicle's upcoming flight.
Competition between Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been intensifying in the past few months.
Rescheduled Attempt
To ease traffic in the skies amid the US federal government shutdown, the aviation regulator is limiting private space launches starting the beginning of the week.
After scrubbing the launch, Blue Origin announced late Sunday that, in coordination with the regulatory body, it was aiming for another attempt as soon as Wednesday within a time slot of afternoon hours Eastern Standard time.
Launch Goals
Upon successful liftoff, the 98-meter New Glenn rocket will transport NASA’s two Mars-bound probes to the Red Planet, in an effort to study the Martian atmospheric past with the long-term goal of human exploration.
Blue Origin’s launch will also act as a key test of its ability to perform reusable rocket landing, which would represent a major advancement for the firm if successful.
Previous Flight
The rocket's first launch in the start of the year was considered a success, as its payload reached space and successfully performed experiments.
But its first-stage booster, which was meant to be recoverable, failed to make its touchdown on a ocean-based target in the Atlantic, and ended up destroyed during descent.
Recovery Efforts
In its second effort Blue Origin will make another attempt to land the booster stage.
Until now, only Musk’s company SpaceX has managed that accomplishment.
Space Race
The competing companies of tycoons Bezos and Musk are locked in a private sector space competition that has grown more intense lately, as the space agency opened up proposals for its planned moon mission, noting that SpaceX was lagging behind.
Donald Trump’s second term has seen the administration push NASA to speed up its progress to launch astronauts to the lunar surface in competition against China.
More rivalry between SpaceX and Blue Origin could “expand our options with regard to launch.”
“More launches means more ideas in space,” a former NASA chief technologist said. “It isn't a bad thing to have Blue Origin, even trailing behind.”
