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Blue Origin, owned by entrepreneur Jeff Bezos, was forced to delay the highly anticipated liftoff of its New Glenn rocket on Sunday because of adverse weather factors at Cape Canaveral.

Launch Delay Causes

Rainfall and a technical problem on the ground led to initial delays, followed by cumulus cloud cover as the 88-minute launch window closed, forcing managers to reschedule the rocket’s planned second mission.

Rivalry between Blue Origin and Musk's space company has been intensifying in recent months.

New Launch Window

To relieve traffic in the skies amid the government funding gap, the Federal Aviation Administration is limiting commercial rocket liftoffs starting Monday.

After scrubbing the mission, Blue Origin announced late Sunday that, working alongside the FAA, it was aiming for another attempt as soon as Wednesday within a time slot of 2.50pm to 4.17pm EST.

Mission Objectives

Upon successful liftoff, the 322-foot New Glenn rocket will carry NASA’s two Mars-bound probes to the Red Planet, in an effort to examine the Martian atmospheric past with the long-term goal of sending people there.

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.

Previous Flight

The rocket's first launch in the start of the year was considered a success, as its payload reached space and successfully performed experiments.

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.

Recovery Efforts

For this new mission the launch provider will try once more to land the booster stage.

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

Space Race

The competing companies of tycoons Bezos and Musk are locked in a private sector space competition that has grown more intense lately, as NASA began accepting bids for its lunar exploration program, noting that SpaceX was lagging behind.

The current administration has involved the government pile pressure on the agency to speed up its progress to send a crewed mission to the Moon in competition against the Asian nation.

Increased competition between the two firms could “give us more choices with regard to launch.”

“Additional missions means more ideas in orbit,” a former NASA chief technologist stated. “It can’t be a bad thing to have Blue Origin, even trailing behind.”