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New Glenn launch postponed: What’s at stake in Blue Origin’s Mars mission?
New Glenn's inaugural flight in January was marked as a success as its payload achieved orbit and successfully performed tests.
The anticipated launch of the New Glenn, the towering rocket built by Jeff Bezos's space company Blue Origin, was postponed due to unfavourable weather conditions in Florida.
Rain and a ground system issue caused delays during the launch, which were followed by cumulus cloud cover as the 88-minute launch window closed, leaving mission managers with only the option of pushing back the rocket's planned second mission.
The company said "cumulus cloud rule" complicated the launch, and they were "reviewing opportunities for our next launch attempt based on forecasted weather."
However, this rescheduling could prove challenging given the US government shutdown. To alleviate airspace congestion, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) will limit commercial rocket launches starting Monday.
Blue Origin had previously said it was seeking an exemption from the FAA.
Why does this second mission matter?
The 322-foot (98-meter) New Glenn rocket is tasked with sending NASA's ESCAPADE twin spacecraft to Mars, a bid to study the Red Planet's climate history and pave the way for eventual human exploration.
New Glenn's inaugural flight in January was marked as a success as its payload achieved orbit and successfully performed tests. But its first-stage booster, which was meant to be reusable, did not stick its landing on a platform in the Atlantic, and instead was lost during descent.
This time, it will try once more to recover the booster stage. Thus far, only Musk's company SpaceX has managed to do that.
Blue Origin's launch is also to serve as a key test of whether it can achieve booster recovery, which would prove a technical breakthrough for the company if successful.
The mission comes as competition intensifies with Elon Musk's SpaceX. The competing companies of billionaires Musk and Bezos are locked in a commercial space race that has recently escalated, as the US federal space agency NASA opened bids for its planned Moon mission — amid complaints that SpaceX was "behind."
