Blue Origin, founded by entrepreneur Jeff Bezos, had to delay the eagerly awaited liftoff of its New Glenn rocket on the weekend because of adverse meteorological factors at the Florida launch site.
Mission Postponement Reasons
Rainfall and a ground system issue led to early setbacks, followed by thick clouds as the narrow time frame for launch ended, leaving mission controllers to reschedule the rocket’s planned second mission.
Competition between Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been heating up in the past few months.
New Launch Window
To ease traffic in the skies amid the government funding gap, the Federal Aviation Administration is limiting private space launches from the beginning of the week.
Following the cancellation of the mission, the company announced late Sunday that, in coordination with the regulatory body, it was aiming for another attempt as early as Wednesday within a time slot of afternoon hours Eastern Standard time.
Mission Objectives
Upon successful liftoff, the 322-foot tall launch vehicle will transport the US space agency's Escapade twin spacecraft to Mars, in an effort to examine the planet’s climate history with the long-term goal of human exploration.
The mission will also serve as a key test of whether it can achieve booster recovery, which would represent a technical breakthrough for the company if accomplished.
Previous Flight
New Glenn’s inaugural flight in January was marked as a achievement, as its cargo achieved orbit and successfully performed experiments.
But its first-stage booster, 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
For this new mission the launch provider will try once more to land the first stage.
Until now, only SpaceX has achieved that accomplishment.
Space Race
The competing companies of billionaires Musk and Bezos are locked in a private sector space competition that has grown more intense lately, as NASA opened up proposals for its planned moon mission, complaining that SpaceX was lagging behind.
The current administration has involved the administration push the agency to speed up its progress 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 launch.”
“More launches means greater innovation in space,” an ex-agency official said. “It can’t be a bad thing to have the competitor, even not in the lead.”
