The aerospace company, owned by entrepreneur Jeff Bezos, was forced to postpone the highly anticipated liftoff of its powerful launch vehicle on Sunday due to unfavorable meteorological factors at Cape Canaveral.
Launch Delay Reasons
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 push back the vehicle's upcoming flight.
Competition between Bezos' firm and Musk's space company has been intensifying in recent months.
New Launch Window
To ease airspace congestion during the government funding gap, the aviation regulator is limiting commercial rocket liftoffs from Monday.
After scrubbing the mission, the company announced on Sunday evening that, working alongside the FAA, it was aiming for another attempt as soon as Wednesday within a time slot of 2.50pm to 4.17pm EST.
Mission Objectives
Upon successful liftoff, the 322-foot tall launch vehicle will carry NASA’s two Mars-bound probes to the Red Planet, to examine the Martian atmospheric past with the eventual hope of sending people there.
The mission will also act as a crucial trial of whether it can achieve reusable rocket landing, which would represent a technical breakthrough for the firm if accomplished.
Previous Flight
The rocket's first launch in January was marked as a achievement, as its payload reached space and successfully performed experiments.
But its main rocket section, which was meant to be recoverable, failed to make its landing on a ocean-based target in the ocean, and ended up destroyed during descent.
Landing Attempts
In its second effort Blue Origin will try once more to recover the first stage.
Thus far, only Musk’s company SpaceX has managed that accomplishment.
Space Race
The competing companies of tycoons Musk and Bezos are locked in a commercial space race that has grown more intense lately, as NASA opened up proposals for its lunar exploration program, complaining that one company was lagging behind.
The current administration has involved the administration push NASA to accelerate its progress to launch astronauts to the lunar surface in competition against the Asian nation.
Increased competition between the two firms could “expand our options with regard to launch.”
“More launches means more ideas in space,” an ex-agency official said. “It isn't a negative to have the competitor, even trailing behind.”
