The aerospace company, owned by entrepreneur Jeff Bezos, had to delay the eagerly awaited liftoff of its New Glenn rocket on the weekend because of unfavorable weather factors at Cape Canaveral.
Mission Postponement Reasons
Precipitation and a technical problem on the ground caused initial delays, then came cumulus cloud cover as the narrow time frame for launch ended, leaving mission controllers 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 ease airspace congestion amid the US federal government shutdown, the aviation regulator is restricting private space launches starting the beginning of the week.
Following the cancellation of the mission, Blue Origin said on Sunday evening that, in coordination with the regulatory body, it was aiming for another attempt as early as Wednesday within a time slot of 2.50pm to 4.17pm Eastern Standard time.
Launch Goals
When it eventually launches, the 322-foot New Glenn rocket will transport NASA’s Escapade twin spacecraft to the Red Planet, in an effort to examine the planet’s climate history with the eventual hope of human exploration.
Blue Origin’s launch will also act as a key test of its ability to perform booster recovery, which would prove a technical breakthrough for the firm if successful.
Earlier Mission
New Glenn’s inaugural flight in the start of the year was considered a success, as its payload achieved orbit and successfully performed tests.
But its first-stage booster, which was designed as reusable, failed to make its landing on a platform in the Atlantic, and ended up destroyed during descent.
Landing Attempts
In its second effort the launch provider will try once more to recover the booster stage.
Until now, only SpaceX has achieved that feat.
Industry Competition
Rival firms of billionaires Musk and Bezos are engaged in a commercial space race that has grown more intense lately, as NASA began accepting proposals for its lunar exploration program, noting that one company was falling behind schedule.
The current administration has involved the government pile pressure on NASA to speed up its progress to send a crewed mission to the lunar surface in competition against China.
More rivalry between the two firms could “give us more choices with regard to launch.”
“Additional missions means greater innovation in orbit,” a former NASA chief technologist said. “It isn't a bad thing to have the competitor, even trailing behind.”
