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Blue Origin, founded by entrepreneur Jeff Bezos, was forced to postpone the eagerly awaited liftoff of its powerful launch vehicle on the weekend because of adverse weather factors at Cape Canaveral.

Mission Postponement Causes

Precipitation and a technical problem on the ground led to early setbacks, followed by cumulus cloud cover as the narrow time frame for launch ended, leaving mission controllers to push back the rocket’s planned second mission.

Competition between Bezos' firm and Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been heating up in the past few months.

Rescheduled Attempt

To relieve airspace congestion amid the government funding gap, the Federal Aviation Administration is restricting private space launches starting the beginning of the week.

After scrubbing the launch, Blue Origin said on Sunday evening that, working alongside the FAA, it was targeting another attempt as soon as Wednesday within a window of afternoon hours EST.

Mission Objectives

Upon successful liftoff, the 98-meter tall launch vehicle will carry the US space agency's two Mars-bound probes to Mars, in an effort to study the planet’s climate history with the long-term goal of human exploration.

The mission will also act as a crucial trial of its ability to perform booster recovery, which would represent a technical breakthrough for the company if accomplished.

Earlier Mission

New Glenn’s inaugural flight in January was marked as a success, as its payload achieved orbit and completed tests.

But its first-stage booster, which was meant to be reusable, failed to make its touchdown on a platform in the Atlantic, and ended up destroyed during the return phase.

Landing Attempts

For this new mission Blue Origin will make another attempt to recover the first stage.

Until now, only SpaceX has achieved that accomplishment.

Industry Competition

The competing companies of tycoons Musk and Bezos are locked in a commercial space race that has grown more intense lately, as NASA began accepting proposals for its planned moon mission, noting 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 amid a race with China.

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

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