Blue Origin, founded by entrepreneur Jeff Bezos, had to delay the eagerly awaited liftoff of its New Glenn rocket on Sunday due to unfavorable weather conditions at the Florida launch site.
Launch Delay Causes
Precipitation and a ground system issue led to early setbacks, then came cumulus cloud cover as the narrow time frame for launch ended, forcing managers to reschedule the rocket’s planned second mission.
Competition between Bezos' firm and Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been intensifying in the past few months.
Rescheduled Attempt
To ease traffic in the skies amid the government funding gap, the Federal Aviation Administration is restricting private space launches from the beginning of the week.
After scrubbing the launch, the company announced late Sunday that, in coordination with the regulatory body, it was targeting another attempt as early as midweek within a time slot of afternoon hours Eastern Standard time.
Launch Goals
Upon successful liftoff, the 322-foot tall launch vehicle will carry NASA’s two Mars-bound probes to Mars, to study the planet’s climate history with the long-term goal of human exploration.
The mission will also act as a crucial trial of whether it can achieve booster recovery, which would represent a major advancement for the company if successful.
Previous Flight
New Glenn’s inaugural flight in the start of the year was marked as a success, as its payload 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 Atlantic, and ended up destroyed during descent.
Landing Attempts
In its second effort Blue Origin will try once more to land the booster stage.
Until now, only SpaceX has achieved that feat.
Space Race
Rival firms of tycoons Bezos and Musk are locked in a private sector space competition that recently escalated, as the space agency opened up proposals for its planned moon mission, complaining that one company was lagging behind.
Donald Trump’s second term has involved the government pile pressure on the agency to speed up its timeline to send a crewed mission 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.”
“More launches means greater innovation in space,” a former NASA chief technologist said. “It can’t be a bad thing to have the competitor, even trailing behind.”
