Blue Origin, owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, was forced to delay the highly anticipated liftoff of its New Glenn rocket on Sunday because of adverse meteorological factors at the Florida launch site.
Mission Postponement Reasons
Rainfall and a ground system issue caused early setbacks, followed by thick clouds as the narrow time frame for launch ended, leaving 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 relieve traffic in the skies during the government funding gap, the Federal Aviation Administration is limiting commercial rocket liftoffs starting the beginning of the week.
Following the cancellation of the launch, Blue Origin announced late Sunday that, in coordination with the regulatory body, it was aiming for another attempt as soon as midweek within a time slot of afternoon hours Eastern Standard time.
Mission Objectives
When it eventually launches, the 98-meter tall launch vehicle will carry NASA’s two Mars-bound probes to the Red Planet, to study the planet’s climate history with the eventual hope of sending people there.
The mission will also act as a crucial trial of its ability to perform booster recovery, which would represent a major advancement for the company if accomplished.
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 platform in the Atlantic, and ended up destroyed during descent.
Landing Attempts
For this new mission the launch provider will try once more to recover the booster stage.
Until now, only Musk’s company SpaceX has managed that accomplishment.
Industry Competition
The competing companies of billionaires Bezos and Musk are engaged in a private sector space competition that has grown more intense lately, as NASA began accepting proposals for its lunar exploration program, noting that one company was lagging behind.
Donald Trump’s second term has involved the government pile pressure on the agency to speed up its timeline to send a crewed mission to the lunar surface in competition against the Asian nation.
Increased competition between the two firms could “give us more choices with regard to liftoff.”
“Additional missions means more ideas in space,” an ex-agency official said. “It can’t be a bad thing to have Blue Origin, even trailing behind.”
