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Blue Origin, owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, was forced to delay the highly anticipated liftoff of its New Glenn rocket on the weekend due to unfavorable weather factors at Cape Canaveral.

Launch Delay Causes

Rainfall and a technical problem on the ground caused 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.

Rivalry between Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been intensifying in the past few months.

New Launch Window

To ease traffic in the skies during the government funding gap, the aviation regulator is restricting commercial rocket liftoffs starting the beginning of the week.

After scrubbing the mission, Blue Origin announced on Sunday evening that, working alongside the regulatory body, it was targeting another attempt as early as midweek within a window of afternoon hours EST.

Mission Objectives

Upon successful liftoff, the 98-meter New Glenn rocket will carry NASA’s Escapade twin spacecraft to the Red Planet, in an effort to examine the planet’s climate history with the eventual hope of human exploration.

Blue Origin’s launch will also act as a key test of its ability to perform booster recovery, which would prove a technical breakthrough for the company if accomplished.

Previous Flight

The rocket's first launch in January was considered a success, as its payload achieved orbit and completed experiments.

But its main rocket section, which was meant to be recoverable, failed to make its landing on a platform in the Atlantic, and ended up destroyed during descent.

Landing Attempts

For this new mission Blue Origin will try once more to land the booster stage.

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

Industry Competition

The competing companies of billionaires Bezos and Musk are engaged in a commercial space race that recently escalated, as the space agency began accepting proposals for its lunar exploration program, complaining that SpaceX was lagging behind.

Donald Trump’s second term has seen the administration pile pressure on NASA to accelerate its progress to send a crewed mission to the Moon amid a race with China.

More rivalry between the two firms could “give us more choices with regard to liftoff.”

“Additional missions means greater innovation in orbit,” an ex-agency official stated. “It isn't a bad thing to have Blue Origin, even not in the lead.”