🔗 Share this article

Blue Origin, founded by entrepreneur Jeff Bezos, had to postpone the highly anticipated liftoff of its New Glenn rocket on the weekend because of adverse weather conditions at Cape Canaveral.

Launch Delay Reasons

Rainfall and a ground system issue led to early setbacks, followed by cumulus cloud cover as the narrow time frame for launch closed, forcing mission controllers to reschedule the rocket’s planned second mission.

Competition between Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been heating up in recent months.

Rescheduled Attempt

To relieve airspace congestion during the government funding gap, the aviation regulator is restricting private space launches starting the beginning of the week.

After scrubbing the mission, the company said late Sunday that, working alongside the FAA, it was aiming for another attempt as early as Wednesday within a time slot of 2.50pm to 4.17pm 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 eventual hope of human exploration.

Blue Origin’s launch will also act as a crucial trial of whether it can achieve booster recovery, which would represent a major advancement for the company if successful.

Previous Flight

The rocket's first launch in the start of the year was marked as a success, as its payload reached space and completed experiments.

But its main rocket section, which was meant to be recoverable, did not stick its landing on a platform in the ocean, and instead was lost during the return phase.

Landing Attempts

For this new mission Blue Origin will make another attempt to land the booster stage.

Thus far, only SpaceX has achieved that accomplishment.

Space Race

Rival firms of tycoons Musk and Bezos are engaged in a private sector space competition that recently escalated, as NASA began accepting proposals for its planned moon mission, complaining that SpaceX was falling behind schedule.

Donald Trump’s second term has seen the administration pile pressure on the agency to speed up its progress to send a crewed mission to the Moon in competition against the Asian nation.

Increased competition between SpaceX and Blue Origin could “give us more choices with regard to launch.”

“Additional missions means more ideas in orbit,” a former NASA chief technologist stated. “It can’t be a negative to have Blue Origin, even not in the lead.”