The aerospace company, founded by entrepreneur Jeff Bezos, was forced to delay the highly anticipated launch of its powerful launch vehicle on Sunday because of adverse meteorological factors at Cape Canaveral.
Mission Postponement Causes
Precipitation and a ground system issue caused early setbacks, followed by cumulus cloud cover as the narrow time frame for launch ended, leaving mission controllers to push back the vehicle's upcoming flight.
Rivalry between Bezos' firm and Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been intensifying in the past few months.
New Launch Window
To relieve traffic in the skies during the government funding gap, the aviation regulator is restricting private space launches starting the beginning of the week.
After scrubbing the launch, the company said late Sunday that, working alongside the regulatory body, it was aiming for another attempt as early as midweek within a time slot of 2.50pm to 4.17pm 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 Martian atmospheric past with the long-term goal of human exploration.
Blue Origin’s launch will also act as a crucial trial of its ability to perform booster recovery, which would prove a technical breakthrough for the firm if accomplished.
Previous Flight
The rocket's first launch in the start of the year was marked as a success, as its payload reached space and completed experiments.
But its main rocket section, which was designed as reusable, failed to make its landing on a platform in the Atlantic, and instead was lost during descent.
Recovery Efforts
For this new mission the launch provider will try once more to recover the booster stage.
Thus far, only SpaceX has managed that feat.
Space Race
Rival firms of tycoons Musk and Bezos are engaged in a private sector space competition that has grown more intense lately, as the space agency began accepting proposals for its lunar exploration program, noting that one company was falling behind schedule.
The current administration has seen the administration push the agency to speed up its timeline to send a crewed mission to the Moon in competition against China.
Increased competition between SpaceX and Blue Origin could “give us more choices with regard to liftoff.”
“More launches means greater innovation in orbit,” a former NASA chief technologist said. “It can’t be a negative to have Blue Origin, even not in the lead.”
