Blue Origin, founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, had to postpone the highly anticipated liftoff of its New Glenn rocket on the weekend due to unfavorable meteorological conditions at Cape Canaveral.
Launch Delay Reasons
Precipitation and a technical problem on the ground led to initial delays, then came cumulus cloud cover as the narrow time frame for launch closed, leaving managers to reschedule the rocket’s planned second mission.
Rivalry between Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been heating up in the past few months.
Rescheduled Attempt
To relieve traffic in the skies during the US federal government shutdown, the Federal Aviation Administration is limiting commercial rocket liftoffs from the beginning of the week.
After scrubbing the mission, the company announced on Sunday evening that, in coordination with the regulatory body, it was aiming for a new try as soon as midweek within a window of 2.50pm to 4.17pm Eastern Standard time.
Mission Objectives
Upon successful liftoff, the 98-meter tall launch vehicle will carry NASA’s Escapade twin spacecraft to the Red Planet, to examine the Martian atmospheric past with the eventual hope of sending people there.
Blue Origin’s launch will also act as a key test of whether it can achieve reusable rocket landing, which would represent a technical breakthrough for the firm if accomplished.
Earlier Mission
New Glenn’s inaugural flight in the start of the year was marked as a success, as its payload reached space and successfully performed experiments.
But its first-stage booster, which was meant to be reusable, failed to make its landing on a platform in the Atlantic, and ended up destroyed during descent.
Landing Attempts
In its second effort Blue Origin will try once more to land the booster stage.
Thus far, only SpaceX has achieved that accomplishment.
Space Race
Rival firms of billionaires Bezos and Musk are engaged in a private sector space competition that recently escalated, as the space agency opened up bids for its planned moon mission, complaining that one company was lagging behind.
The current administration has involved the government push the agency to accelerate its progress to send a crewed mission to the Moon in competition against the Asian nation.
More rivalry between SpaceX and Blue Origin could “expand our options with regard to liftoff.”
“More launches means more ideas in orbit,” a former NASA chief technologist stated. “It can’t be a negative to have the competitor, even not in the lead.”
