Blue Origin, owned by entrepreneur Jeff Bezos, had to postpone the highly anticipated launch of its New Glenn rocket on the weekend due to adverse meteorological conditions at the Florida launch site.
Launch Delay Reasons
Precipitation and a ground system issue caused initial delays, followed by cumulus cloud cover as the narrow time frame for launch closed, forcing managers to reschedule the rocket’s planned second mission.
Competition between Blue Origin and Musk's space company has been heating up in recent months.
New Launch Window
To ease airspace congestion amid the government funding gap, the Federal Aviation Administration is restricting commercial rocket liftoffs from the beginning of the week.
After scrubbing the launch, the company said late Sunday that, working alongside the regulatory body, it was targeting another attempt as soon as midweek within a time slot of 2.50pm to 4.17pm EST.
Mission Objectives
Upon successful liftoff, the 98-meter New Glenn rocket will carry the US space agency's Escapade twin spacecraft to the Red Planet, in an effort to study the Martian atmospheric past with the eventual hope of human exploration.
The mission will also act as a crucial trial of whether it can achieve booster recovery, which would prove a technical breakthrough for the company if successful.
Earlier Mission
New Glenn’s inaugural flight in the start of the year was marked as a achievement, as its cargo reached space and completed experiments.
But its main rocket section, which was designed as reusable, failed to make its touchdown on a ocean-based target in the ocean, and ended up destroyed during descent.
Recovery Efforts
For this new mission Blue Origin will try once more to recover the booster stage.
Until now, only SpaceX has managed that feat.
Space Race
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 one company was lagging behind.
The current administration has seen the administration push the agency to speed up its progress to launch astronauts to the lunar surface in competition against the Asian nation.
More rivalry between SpaceX and Blue Origin could “give us more choices with regard to liftoff.”
“More launches means greater innovation in space,” an ex-agency official said. “It can’t be a negative to have the competitor, even trailing behind.”
