Blue Origin, owned by entrepreneur Jeff Bezos, was forced to postpone the highly anticipated launch of its New Glenn rocket on the weekend due to unfavorable meteorological conditions at the Florida launch site.
Launch Delay Causes
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 rocket’s planned second mission.
Rivalry between Blue Origin and Musk's space company has been heating up in the past few months.
Rescheduled Attempt
To ease airspace congestion amid the government funding gap, the aviation regulator is restricting commercial rocket liftoffs from the beginning of the week.
After scrubbing the launch, Blue Origin announced late Sunday that, working alongside the regulatory body, it was targeting another attempt as soon as midweek within a time slot of afternoon hours Eastern Standard time.
Launch Goals
Upon successful liftoff, the 98-meter tall launch vehicle will carry NASA’s Escapade twin spacecraft to the Red Planet, to study the planet’s climate history with the eventual hope of human exploration.
The mission will also serve as a crucial trial of whether it can achieve reusable rocket landing, which would prove a technical breakthrough for the company if successful.
Earlier Mission
The rocket's first launch in the start of the year was marked as a achievement, as its payload reached space and completed tests.
But its main rocket section, which was meant to be reusable, did not stick its touchdown on a ocean-based target in the ocean, and instead was lost during the return phase.
Landing Attempts
In its second effort Blue Origin will try once more to land the booster stage.
Until now, only Musk’s company SpaceX has achieved that feat.
Space Race
The competing companies of billionaires Bezos and Musk are engaged in a private sector space competition that recently escalated, as NASA opened up bids for its planned moon mission, noting that SpaceX was falling behind schedule.
The current administration has seen the administration push NASA to speed up its progress to launch astronauts to the Moon amid a race with the Asian nation.
More rivalry between the two firms could “give us more choices with regard to launch.”
“Additional missions means greater innovation in space,” a former NASA chief technologist stated. “It isn't a negative to have the competitor, even trailing behind.”
