The aerospace company, founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, was forced to postpone the eagerly awaited launch of its New Glenn rocket on Sunday because of adverse meteorological conditions 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, forcing managers to push back the vehicle's upcoming flight.
Competition between Bezos' firm 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 Federal Aviation Administration is restricting commercial rocket liftoffs starting Monday.
After scrubbing the launch, the company said on Sunday evening that, working alongside the FAA, it was targeting a new try as soon as Wednesday within a time slot of 2.50pm to 4.17pm Eastern Standard time.
Mission Objectives
Upon successful liftoff, the 98-meter New Glenn rocket will transport NASA’s two Mars-bound probes to the Red Planet, in an effort to study the Martian atmospheric past with the long-term goal of sending people there.
Blue Origin’s launch will also act as a crucial trial of whether it can achieve booster recovery, which would represent a major advancement for the company if successful.
Earlier Mission
The rocket's first launch in January was marked as a achievement, as its payload reached space and completed experiments.
But its first-stage booster, which was meant to be reusable, failed to make its touchdown on a platform in the ocean, and ended up destroyed during descent.
Recovery Efforts
In its second effort the launch provider will try once more to recover the booster stage.
Until now, only SpaceX has achieved that feat.
Space Race
The competing companies of billionaires Musk and Bezos are engaged in a private sector space competition that recently escalated, as the space agency opened up proposals for its planned moon mission, noting that SpaceX was lagging behind.
The current administration has seen the government pile pressure on the agency to speed up its timeline to launch astronauts to the Moon amid a race with China.
Increased competition between the two firms could “give us more choices with regard to liftoff.”
“More launches means greater innovation in orbit,” a former NASA chief technologist said. “It isn't a bad thing to have the competitor, even trailing behind.”
