Blue Origin, owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, had to postpone the highly anticipated liftoff of its New Glenn rocket on the weekend due to adverse meteorological factors at the Florida launch site.
Launch Delay Reasons
Rainfall and a technical problem on the ground caused early setbacks, then came cumulus cloud cover as the narrow time frame for launch ended, forcing mission controllers to reschedule the vehicle's upcoming flight.
Competition between Bezos' firm and Musk's space company has been heating up in the past few months.
Rescheduled Attempt
To ease airspace congestion amid the US federal government shutdown, the Federal Aviation Administration is restricting private space launches starting the beginning of the week.
After scrubbing the mission, the company said late Sunday that, in coordination with the regulatory body, it was aiming for another attempt as soon as midweek within a window of afternoon hours Eastern Standard time.
Launch Goals
Upon successful liftoff, the 322-foot New Glenn rocket will carry the US space agency's two Mars-bound probes to the Red Planet, in an effort to study the planet’s climate history with the eventual hope of human exploration.
Blue Origin’s launch will also act as a crucial trial of whether it can achieve reusable rocket landing, which would represent a technical breakthrough for the firm if successful.
Previous Flight
The rocket's first launch in the start of the year was marked as a success, as its payload reached space and successfully performed tests.
But its main rocket section, which was designed as reusable, failed to make its landing on a ocean-based target in the ocean, and instead was lost during the return phase.
Landing Attempts
For this new mission Blue Origin will make another attempt to land the booster stage.
Until now, only SpaceX has achieved that feat.
Industry Competition
The competing companies of tycoons Musk and Bezos are locked in a commercial space race that recently escalated, as NASA opened up proposals for its lunar exploration program, complaining that SpaceX was lagging behind.
Donald Trump’s second term has involved the government pile pressure on NASA to speed up its progress to launch astronauts to the Moon amid a race with the Asian nation.
Increased competition between the two firms could “give us more choices with regard to liftoff.”
“Additional missions means more ideas in orbit,” an ex-agency official said. “It can’t be a bad thing to have the competitor, even trailing behind.”
