The aerospace company, founded by entrepreneur Jeff Bezos, was forced to delay the eagerly awaited liftoff of its New Glenn rocket on Sunday due to unfavorable meteorological conditions at Cape Canaveral.
Launch Delay Reasons
Rainfall and a technical problem on the ground caused early setbacks, followed by thick clouds as the 88-minute launch window closed, leaving mission controllers to push back the vehicle's upcoming flight.
Rivalry between Bezos' firm and Musk's space company 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 from the beginning of the week.
After scrubbing the mission, Blue Origin announced late Sunday that, working alongside the regulatory body, it was targeting a new try as soon as Wednesday within a window of afternoon hours Eastern Standard time.
Launch Goals
Upon successful liftoff, the 98-meter tall launch vehicle will carry NASA’s two Mars-bound probes to the Red Planet, in an effort to study the Martian atmospheric past with the eventual hope of human exploration.
Blue Origin’s launch will also act as a key test of whether it can achieve reusable rocket landing, which would represent a technical breakthrough for the company if successful.
Previous Flight
The rocket's first launch in the start of the year was marked as a success, as its payload reached space and successfully performed experiments.
But its main rocket section, which was designed as recoverable, failed to make its touchdown on a platform in the Atlantic, and instead was lost during descent.
Landing Attempts
In its second effort the launch provider will make another attempt to recover the first stage.
Thus far, only Musk’s company SpaceX has managed that accomplishment.
Space Race
The competing companies of billionaires Musk and Bezos are locked in a commercial space race that recently escalated, as NASA opened up proposals for its lunar exploration program, noting that SpaceX was lagging behind.
Donald Trump’s second term has seen the government push NASA to speed up its progress to send a crewed mission to the lunar surface amid a race with 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 stated. “It can’t be a negative to have Blue Origin, even not in the lead.”
