Blue Origin, founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, had to delay the highly anticipated launch of its powerful launch vehicle on Sunday due to adverse weather factors at Cape Canaveral.
Launch Delay Causes
Precipitation and a ground system issue caused early setbacks, followed by cumulus cloud cover as the narrow time frame for launch closed, leaving mission controllers to reschedule the vehicle's upcoming flight.
Competition between Bezos' firm and Musk's space company has been intensifying in the past few months.
New Launch Window
To relieve traffic in the skies amid the government funding gap, the aviation regulator is restricting commercial rocket liftoffs from the beginning of the week.
After scrubbing the mission, the company announced on Sunday evening that, in coordination with the FAA, it was targeting a new try as early as midweek within a window of afternoon hours EST.
Launch Goals
Upon successful liftoff, the 98-meter tall launch vehicle will transport NASA’s Escapade twin spacecraft to Mars, in an effort to study the planet’s climate history with the long-term goal of human exploration.
The mission will also serve as a crucial trial of its ability to perform reusable rocket landing, which would represent a technical breakthrough for the company if accomplished.
Previous Flight
The rocket's first launch in January was marked as a achievement, as its cargo reached space and completed experiments.
But its first-stage booster, which was designed as reusable, failed to make its landing 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 recover the booster stage.
Until now, only Musk’s company SpaceX has managed that feat.
Space Race
Rival firms of tycoons Bezos and Musk are locked in a commercial space race that has grown more intense lately, as NASA opened up bids for its planned moon mission, noting that one company was lagging behind.
The current administration has involved the administration push NASA to speed up its timeline to launch astronauts to the lunar surface in competition against China.
Increased competition between the two firms could “expand our options with regard to liftoff.”
“More launches means greater innovation in orbit,” a former NASA chief technologist said. “It can’t be a bad thing to have the competitor, even trailing behind.”
