The aerospace company, owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, had to postpone the eagerly awaited launch of its powerful launch vehicle on Sunday due to unfavorable weather factors at Cape Canaveral.
Launch Delay Causes
Rainfall and a technical problem on the ground caused initial delays, then came thick clouds as the narrow time frame for launch ended, leaving mission controllers to reschedule the vehicle's upcoming flight.
Competition between Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been heating up in the past few months.
New Launch Window
To relieve airspace congestion amid the US federal government shutdown, the Federal Aviation Administration is limiting commercial rocket liftoffs starting Monday.
Following the cancellation of the launch, the company announced late Sunday that, working alongside the FAA, it was targeting another attempt as early as Wednesday within a window of afternoon hours Eastern Standard time.
Mission Objectives
Upon successful liftoff, the 98-meter tall launch vehicle will carry the US space agency's two Mars-bound probes to Mars, in an effort to examine the Martian atmospheric past with the eventual hope of human exploration.
The mission will also serve as a key test of its ability to perform 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 marked as a achievement, as its payload achieved orbit and successfully performed experiments.
But its first-stage booster, which was meant to be recoverable, did not stick its landing on a platform in the Atlantic, and ended up destroyed during the return phase.
Recovery Efforts
For this new mission Blue Origin will try once more to land the booster stage.
Thus far, only Musk’s company SpaceX has achieved that feat.
Industry Competition
Rival firms of billionaires Musk and Bezos are engaged in a private sector space competition that recently escalated, as NASA began accepting bids for its lunar exploration program, noting that SpaceX was falling behind schedule.
The current administration has involved the government pile pressure on NASA to accelerate its progress to send a crewed mission to the Moon amid a race with the Asian nation.
More rivalry between SpaceX and Blue Origin could “expand our options with regard to launch.”
“More launches means greater innovation in space,” an ex-agency official stated. “It can’t be a negative to have the competitor, even trailing behind.”
