The aerospace company, founded by entrepreneur Jeff Bezos, had to delay the highly anticipated launch of its New Glenn rocket on the weekend due to unfavorable weather conditions at the Florida launch site.
Mission Postponement Causes
Precipitation and a ground system issue caused early setbacks, then came cumulus cloud cover as the narrow time frame for launch closed, leaving managers to reschedule the vehicle's upcoming flight.
Competition between Bezos' firm and Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been heating up in the past few months.
New Launch Window
To relieve traffic in the skies during the government funding gap, the aviation regulator is limiting private space launches from Monday.
After scrubbing the mission, the company said on Sunday evening that, in coordination with the regulatory body, it was targeting another attempt as early as midweek within a time slot of 2.50pm to 4.17pm EST.
Launch Goals
When it eventually launches, the 98-meter tall launch vehicle will carry the US space agency's two Mars-bound probes to Mars, in an effort to study the planet’s climate history with the eventual hope of human exploration.
Blue Origin’s launch will also serve as a crucial trial of whether it can achieve reusable rocket landing, which would prove a technical breakthrough for the firm if accomplished.
Previous Flight
The rocket's first launch in the start of the year was marked as a achievement, as its payload achieved orbit and successfully performed experiments.
But its first-stage booster, which was meant to be recoverable, failed to make its landing on a ocean-based target in the ocean, and ended up destroyed during the return phase.
Recovery Efforts
For this new mission the launch provider will make another attempt to land the booster stage.
Until now, only SpaceX has achieved that accomplishment.
Space Race
Rival firms of billionaires Musk and Bezos are locked in a commercial space race that recently escalated, as the space agency began accepting bids for its planned moon mission, complaining that SpaceX was falling behind schedule.
The current administration has seen the government push the agency to accelerate its timeline to launch astronauts to the Moon amid a race with the Asian nation.
Increased competition between SpaceX and Blue Origin could “expand our options with regard to launch.”
“More launches means greater innovation in orbit,” a former NASA chief technologist stated. “It isn't a bad thing to have the competitor, even trailing behind.”
