The aerospace company, founded by entrepreneur Jeff Bezos, was forced to postpone the eagerly awaited launch of its powerful launch vehicle on Sunday due to adverse weather factors at Cape Canaveral.
Launch Delay Reasons
Precipitation and a technical problem on the ground led to early setbacks, followed by cumulus cloud cover as the narrow time frame for launch closed, leaving mission controllers to push back the vehicle's upcoming flight.
Rivalry between Bezos' firm and Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been heating up in recent months.
New Launch Window
To relieve airspace congestion amid the government funding gap, the aviation regulator is limiting commercial rocket liftoffs from Monday.
Following the cancellation of the launch, Blue Origin announced late Sunday that, in coordination with the FAA, it was aiming for a new try as early as midweek within a time slot of afternoon hours Eastern Standard time.
Mission Objectives
Upon successful liftoff, the 322-foot 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 long-term goal of human exploration.
The mission will also serve as a key test of its ability to perform reusable rocket landing, which would represent a major advancement for the firm if successful.
Earlier Mission
The rocket's first launch in January was marked as a success, as its payload reached space and successfully performed experiments.
But its first-stage booster, which was meant to be recoverable, failed to make its touchdown on a platform in the Atlantic, and ended up destroyed during descent.
Recovery Efforts
For this new mission the launch provider will try once more to recover the first stage.
Until now, only SpaceX has managed that feat.
Industry Competition
Rival firms of billionaires Musk and Bezos are locked in a private sector space competition that recently escalated, as NASA began accepting bids for its lunar exploration program, complaining that SpaceX was falling behind schedule.
The current administration has seen the government pile pressure on the agency to accelerate its progress to launch astronauts to the lunar surface in competition against the Asian nation.
Increased competition between SpaceX and Blue Origin could “expand our options with regard to launch.”
“Additional missions means greater innovation in orbit,” a former NASA chief technologist stated. “It can’t be a bad thing to have Blue Origin, even trailing behind.”
