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The aerospace company, owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, had to delay the highly anticipated liftoff of its New Glenn rocket on Sunday because of adverse weather factors at the Florida launch site.

Mission Postponement Causes

Precipitation and a ground system issue led to initial delays, followed by cumulus cloud cover as the narrow time frame for launch ended, leaving managers to push back the rocket’s planned second mission.

Competition between Bezos' firm and Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been intensifying in recent months.

Rescheduled Attempt

To relieve airspace congestion amid the government funding gap, the aviation regulator is limiting commercial rocket liftoffs from the beginning of the week.

Following the cancellation of the launch, the company said on Sunday evening that, working alongside the regulatory body, it was targeting another attempt as soon as Wednesday within a window of afternoon hours EST.

Mission Objectives

Upon successful liftoff, the 98-meter New Glenn rocket will transport the US space agency's two Mars-bound probes to Mars, to study the planet’s climate history with the eventual hope 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 technical breakthrough for the firm if accomplished.

Earlier Mission

New Glenn’s inaugural flight in the start of the year was marked as a achievement, as its payload reached space and successfully performed tests.

But its first-stage booster, which was designed as recoverable, failed to make its landing on a platform in the Atlantic, and ended up destroyed 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 feat.

Space Race

The competing companies of tycoons Bezos and Musk are locked in a private sector space competition that recently escalated, as NASA began accepting proposals for its planned moon mission, noting that one company was lagging behind.

The current administration has seen the administration pile pressure on NASA to accelerate its timeline to send a crewed mission to the lunar surface in competition against the Asian nation.

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

“More launches means greater innovation in orbit,” a former NASA chief technologist said. “It can’t be a bad thing to have the competitor, even trailing behind.”