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Blue Origin, owned by entrepreneur Jeff Bezos, had to delay the highly anticipated liftoff of its New Glenn rocket on the weekend due to adverse meteorological factors at the Florida launch site.

Launch Delay Reasons

Rainfall and a technical problem on the ground led to early setbacks, then came cumulus cloud cover as the 88-minute launch window ended, leaving mission controllers to reschedule the vehicle's upcoming flight.

Rivalry 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 US federal government shutdown, the aviation regulator is restricting commercial rocket liftoffs starting the beginning of the week.

After scrubbing the mission, the company announced on Sunday evening that, working alongside the regulatory body, it was targeting another attempt as early as Wednesday within a time slot of afternoon hours EST.

Launch Goals

Upon successful liftoff, the 322-foot tall launch vehicle will carry the US space agency's two Mars-bound probes to the Red Planet, to study the planet’s climate history with the long-term goal of human exploration.

Blue Origin’s launch will also serve as a key test of whether it can achieve booster recovery, which would represent a major advancement for the firm if successful.

Earlier Mission

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

But its first-stage booster, which was designed as recoverable, failed to make its landing on a platform in the ocean, and instead was lost during the return phase.

Landing Attempts

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

Thus far, only Musk’s company SpaceX has achieved that feat.

Space Race

Rival firms of billionaires Musk and Bezos are engaged in a private sector space competition that recently escalated, as NASA opened up bids for its planned moon mission, complaining that one company was lagging behind.

The current administration has involved the administration pile pressure on NASA to accelerate its timeline to launch astronauts to the Moon in competition against the Asian nation.

Increased competition between SpaceX and Blue Origin could “expand our options with regard to launch.”

“Additional missions means greater innovation in orbit,” a former NASA chief technologist said. “It can’t be a bad thing to have Blue Origin, even not in the lead.”