🔗 Share this article

The aerospace company, founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, was forced to delay the eagerly awaited liftoff of its New Glenn rocket on the weekend because of unfavorable weather conditions at Cape Canaveral.

Launch Delay Reasons

Rainfall and a technical problem on the ground caused initial delays, followed by cumulus cloud cover as the 88-minute launch window closed, leaving mission controllers to push back the vehicle's upcoming flight.

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

New Launch Window

To relieve traffic in the skies during the government funding gap, the Federal Aviation Administration is limiting commercial rocket liftoffs starting the beginning of the week.

After scrubbing the launch, Blue Origin announced late Sunday that, in coordination with the regulatory body, it was aiming for another attempt as soon as midweek within a time slot of 2.50pm to 4.17pm EST.

Mission Objectives

Upon successful liftoff, the 98-meter New Glenn rocket will carry NASA’s Escapade twin spacecraft to the Red Planet, 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 its ability to perform booster recovery, which would prove a technical breakthrough for the company if accomplished.

Earlier Mission

New Glenn’s inaugural flight in January was considered a success, as its cargo reached space and completed tests.

But its main rocket section, which was meant to be reusable, failed to make its touchdown on a platform in the ocean, and instead was lost during descent.

Landing Attempts

In its second effort Blue Origin will make another attempt to recover the booster stage.

Until now, only SpaceX has achieved that accomplishment.

Industry Competition

The competing companies of billionaires Musk and Bezos are engaged in a private sector space competition that recently escalated, as NASA began accepting bids for its planned moon mission, complaining that one company was falling behind schedule.

The current administration has involved the government push the agency to speed up its progress to send a crewed mission to the Moon in competition against the Asian nation.

Increased competition between the two firms could “give us more choices with regard to liftoff.”

“Additional missions means more ideas in orbit,” an ex-agency official said. “It isn't a bad thing to have Blue Origin, even trailing behind.”