The aerospace company, owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, had to delay the highly anticipated liftoff of its powerful launch vehicle on the weekend due to unfavorable weather conditions at Cape Canaveral.
Launch Delay Reasons
Rainfall and a ground system issue led to initial delays, then came thick clouds as the narrow time frame for launch ended, forcing managers to reschedule the vehicle's upcoming flight.
Competition between Bezos' firm and Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been heating up in recent months.
New Launch Window
To relieve traffic in the skies amid the government funding gap, the Federal Aviation Administration is restricting commercial rocket liftoffs from the beginning of the week.
After scrubbing the mission, Blue Origin announced late Sunday that, in coordination with the regulatory body, it was targeting a new try as soon as midweek within a time slot of 2.50pm to 4.17pm EST.
Launch Goals
Upon successful liftoff, the 98-meter tall launch vehicle will carry NASA’s two Mars-bound probes to Mars, in an effort to study the Martian atmospheric past with the long-term goal of sending people there.
Blue Origin’s launch will also act as a key test of its ability to perform booster recovery, which would prove a major advancement for the firm if accomplished.
Earlier Mission
The rocket's first launch in the start of the year was marked as a success, as its cargo reached space and successfully performed experiments.
But its first-stage booster, which was designed as reusable, failed to make its touchdown on a ocean-based target in the Atlantic, and instead was lost during descent.
Recovery Efforts
In its second effort the launch provider will try once more to recover the booster stage.
Thus far, only SpaceX has achieved that feat.
Space Race
The competing companies of tycoons Bezos and Musk are locked in a commercial space race that has grown more intense lately, as the space agency opened up bids for its lunar exploration program, noting that SpaceX was lagging behind.
The current administration has involved the government pile pressure on the agency to speed up its progress to launch astronauts to the Moon amid a race with the Asian nation.
More rivalry between SpaceX and Blue Origin could “give us more choices with regard to liftoff.”
“More launches means more ideas in space,” a former NASA chief technologist stated. “It can’t be a bad thing to have Blue Origin, even trailing behind.”
