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The aerospace company, founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, was forced to postpone the highly anticipated liftoff of its powerful launch vehicle on Sunday due to adverse meteorological factors at the Florida launch site.

Mission Postponement Reasons

Rainfall and a ground system issue led to early setbacks, followed by thick clouds as the narrow time frame for launch ended, leaving mission controllers to push back the vehicle's upcoming flight.

Competition between Bezos' firm and Musk's space company has been heating up in the past few months.

New Launch Window

To ease traffic in the skies during the government funding gap, the aviation regulator is limiting commercial rocket liftoffs from Monday.

After scrubbing the launch, Blue Origin said late Sunday that, in coordination with the regulatory body, it was aiming for another attempt as soon as Wednesday within a time slot of afternoon hours Eastern Standard time.

Mission Objectives

Upon successful liftoff, the 98-meter New Glenn rocket will carry NASA’s two Mars-bound probes to the Red Planet, to study the Martian atmospheric past with the long-term goal of human exploration.

The mission will also serve as a key test of its ability to perform booster recovery, which would prove a technical breakthrough for the firm if successful.

Previous Flight

New Glenn’s inaugural flight in January was considered a achievement, as its payload reached space 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 ended up destroyed during descent.

Landing Attempts

For this new mission the launch provider will make another attempt to recover the booster stage.

Until now, only Musk’s company SpaceX has achieved that feat.

Industry Competition

The competing companies of billionaires Musk and Bezos are locked in a private sector space competition that recently escalated, as NASA opened up proposals for its planned moon mission, complaining that SpaceX was lagging behind.

The current administration has seen the government push the agency to accelerate its progress to send a crewed mission to the lunar surface amid a race with the Asian nation.

More rivalry between SpaceX and Blue Origin could “expand our options with regard to liftoff.”

“More launches means more ideas in space,” an ex-agency official stated. “It isn't a bad thing to have Blue Origin, even trailing behind.”