The aerospace company, owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, was forced to delay the highly anticipated launch of its powerful launch vehicle on Sunday because of adverse weather factors at Cape Canaveral.
Mission Postponement Reasons
Precipitation and a technical problem on the ground led to early setbacks, then came cumulus cloud cover as the narrow time frame for launch ended, leaving managers to push back the vehicle's upcoming flight.
Competition between Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been intensifying in the past few months.
Rescheduled Attempt
To ease airspace congestion amid the US federal government shutdown, the Federal Aviation Administration is limiting private space launches from Monday.
After scrubbing the mission, Blue Origin announced late Sunday that, working alongside the FAA, it was aiming for another attempt as early as midweek within a window of 2.50pm to 4.17pm EST.
Mission Objectives
Upon successful liftoff, the 98-meter New Glenn rocket will carry the US space agency's Escapade twin spacecraft to Mars, in an effort to examine the Martian atmospheric past with the eventual hope of human exploration.
The mission will also serve as a key test of whether it can achieve reusable rocket landing, which would represent a technical breakthrough for the firm if accomplished.
Previous Flight
New Glenn’s inaugural flight in January was marked as a achievement, as its payload reached space and successfully performed experiments.
But its main rocket section, which was meant to be reusable, failed to make its landing on a platform in the ocean, and instead was lost during the return phase.
Recovery Efforts
For this new mission the launch provider will try once more to land the booster stage.
Until now, only SpaceX has managed that feat.
Space Race
The competing companies of tycoons Musk and Bezos are engaged in a commercial space race that recently escalated, as NASA began accepting bids for its planned moon mission, complaining that one company was lagging behind.
The current administration has involved the administration pile pressure on NASA to speed up its timeline to launch astronauts to the lunar surface in competition against China.
Increased competition between the two firms could “give us more choices with regard to liftoff.”
“More launches means more ideas in orbit,” a former NASA chief technologist said. “It isn't a bad thing to have Blue Origin, even not in the lead.”
