The aerospace company, founded by entrepreneur Jeff Bezos, had to postpone the highly anticipated launch of its powerful launch vehicle on the weekend because of unfavorable meteorological conditions at the Florida launch site.
Mission Postponement Causes
Rainfall and a ground system issue led to early setbacks, then came cumulus cloud cover as the narrow time frame for launch closed, leaving mission controllers to push back the vehicle's upcoming flight.
Competition between Blue Origin and Musk's space company has been heating up in recent months.
Rescheduled Attempt
To relieve traffic in the skies amid the US federal government shutdown, the aviation regulator is restricting commercial rocket liftoffs from the beginning of the week.
After scrubbing the mission, the company announced late Sunday that, working alongside the regulatory body, it was aiming for another attempt as soon as midweek within a window of 2.50pm to 4.17pm EST.
Mission Objectives
Upon successful liftoff, the 98-meter New Glenn rocket will carry NASA’s Escapade twin spacecraft to the Red Planet, to study the Martian atmospheric past with the long-term goal of human exploration.
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
New Glenn’s inaugural flight in the start of the year was marked as a success, as its payload achieved orbit and successfully performed experiments.
But its first-stage booster, which was designed as reusable, failed to make its touchdown on a platform in the Atlantic, and instead was lost during the return phase.
Landing Attempts
For this new mission the launch provider will make another attempt to land the booster stage.
Until now, only SpaceX has achieved that accomplishment.
Space Race
The competing companies of billionaires Bezos and Musk are locked in a commercial space race that recently escalated, as NASA began accepting bids for its lunar exploration program, noting that one company was lagging behind.
Donald Trump’s second term has involved the administration push the agency to accelerate its timeline to send a crewed mission to the Moon in competition against the Asian nation.
Increased competition between the two firms could “expand our options with regard to liftoff.”
“More launches means greater innovation in orbit,” an ex-agency official said. “It can’t be a negative to have the competitor, even trailing behind.”
