The aerospace company, owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, was forced to delay the highly anticipated liftoff of its New Glenn rocket on Sunday because of unfavorable meteorological conditions at Cape Canaveral.
Launch Delay Causes
Precipitation and a ground system issue caused early setbacks, then came cumulus cloud cover as the narrow time frame for launch ended, forcing 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 relieve traffic in the skies amid the US federal government shutdown, the aviation regulator is limiting commercial rocket liftoffs starting the beginning of the week.
Following the cancellation of the launch, Blue Origin said late Sunday that, in coordination with the FAA, it was targeting another attempt as soon as midweek within a window of 2.50pm to 4.17pm EST.
Launch Goals
When it eventually launches, the 322-foot New Glenn rocket will carry NASA’s two Mars-bound probes to the Red Planet, in an effort to examine the planet’s climate history with the eventual hope of human exploration.
The mission will also act as a key test of whether it can achieve reusable rocket landing, which would represent a major advancement for the company if successful.
Previous Flight
New Glenn’s inaugural flight in the start of the year 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 ocean-based target in the Atlantic, and instead was lost during descent.
Recovery Efforts
In its second effort Blue Origin will try once more to recover the booster stage.
Until now, only Musk’s company SpaceX has achieved that accomplishment.
Space Race
Rival firms of billionaires Bezos and Musk are engaged in a commercial space race that recently escalated, as NASA opened up bids for its planned moon mission, complaining that one company was lagging behind.
Donald Trump’s second term has seen the government pile pressure on the agency to speed up its timeline to launch astronauts 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 more ideas in orbit,” a former NASA chief technologist said. “It can’t be a negative to have the competitor, even not in the lead.”
