Blue Origin, owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, was forced to delay the highly anticipated liftoff of its powerful launch vehicle on the weekend because of unfavorable meteorological conditions at Cape Canaveral.
Launch Delay Reasons
Rainfall and a ground system issue caused initial delays, then came thick clouds as the 88-minute launch window closed, forcing mission controllers to reschedule the rocket’s planned second mission.
Rivalry between Bezos' firm and Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been intensifying in the past few months.
New Launch Window
To ease traffic in the skies amid the government funding gap, the aviation regulator is restricting commercial rocket liftoffs from Monday.
After scrubbing the mission, Blue Origin announced late Sunday that, working alongside the regulatory body, it was targeting a new try as early as midweek within a time slot of afternoon hours EST.
Launch Goals
When it eventually launches, the 322-foot tall launch vehicle will carry the US space agency's Escapade twin spacecraft to Mars, to examine the Martian atmospheric past with the eventual hope of sending people there.
The mission will also act as a crucial trial of whether it can achieve booster recovery, which would represent a technical breakthrough for the firm if successful.
Previous Flight
The rocket's first launch in the start of the year was considered a success, as its payload achieved orbit and successfully performed tests.
But its first-stage booster, which was designed as reusable, failed to make its landing on a ocean-based target in the ocean, and instead was lost during descent.
Recovery Efforts
For this new mission the launch provider will make another attempt to land the booster stage.
Thus far, only Musk’s company SpaceX has achieved that feat.
Industry Competition
The competing companies of billionaires Musk and Bezos are engaged in a commercial space race that has grown more intense lately, as the space agency opened up proposals for its lunar exploration program, complaining that SpaceX was falling behind schedule.
The current administration has involved the administration pile pressure on NASA to accelerate its timeline to send a crewed mission to the lunar surface in competition against China.
Increased competition between the two firms could “give us more choices with regard to launch.”
“Additional missions means greater innovation in space,” a former NASA chief technologist said. “It isn't a bad thing to have the competitor, even not in the lead.”
