The aerospace company, owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, had to postpone the eagerly awaited liftoff of its powerful launch vehicle on Sunday due to adverse meteorological conditions at Cape Canaveral.
Launch Delay Causes
Rainfall and a ground system issue caused initial delays, then came cumulus cloud cover as the narrow time frame for launch closed, leaving mission controllers to reschedule the rocket’s planned second mission.
Competition between Blue Origin and Musk's space company 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 limiting commercial rocket liftoffs starting the beginning of the week.
Following the cancellation of the launch, Blue Origin said on Sunday evening that, in coordination with the FAA, it was aiming for another attempt as early as Wednesday within a time slot of afternoon hours EST.
Launch Goals
Upon successful liftoff, the 322-foot tall launch vehicle will transport NASA’s Escapade twin spacecraft to Mars, in an effort to study the planet’s climate history with the eventual hope of sending people there.
The mission will also act as a key test of its ability to perform reusable rocket landing, 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 achievement, as its payload reached space and successfully performed experiments.
But its main rocket section, which was meant to be reusable, did not stick its landing on a platform in the ocean, and ended up destroyed during the return phase.
Landing Attempts
For this new mission the launch provider will try once more to recover the booster stage.
Thus far, only Musk’s company SpaceX has achieved that accomplishment.
Space Race
The competing companies 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 planned moon mission, noting that SpaceX was falling behind schedule.
The current administration has involved the administration push NASA to speed up its progress to launch astronauts to the lunar surface amid a race with China.
Increased competition between SpaceX and Blue Origin could “give us more choices with regard to launch.”
“More launches means more ideas in space,” an ex-agency official said. “It isn't a bad thing to have Blue Origin, even not in the lead.”
