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Blue Origin, founded by entrepreneur Jeff Bezos, had to postpone the eagerly awaited launch of its New Glenn rocket on Sunday due to adverse meteorological factors at Cape Canaveral.

Mission Postponement Causes

Precipitation and a ground system issue caused early setbacks, then came cumulus cloud cover as the narrow time frame for launch ended, leaving mission controllers to reschedule the vehicle's upcoming flight.

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

Rescheduled Attempt

To ease traffic in the skies amid the US federal government shutdown, the aviation regulator is restricting commercial rocket liftoffs from Monday.

Following the cancellation of 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 time slot of 2.50pm to 4.17pm EST.

Mission Objectives

Upon successful liftoff, the 322-foot New Glenn rocket will transport NASA’s two Mars-bound probes to Mars, to examine the planet’s climate history with the long-term goal of human exploration.

The mission will also act as a crucial trial of whether it can achieve booster recovery, which would prove a major advancement for the company if accomplished.

Previous Flight

The rocket's first launch in January was marked as a achievement, as its cargo reached space and successfully performed experiments.

But its main rocket section, which was designed as recoverable, did not stick its landing on a platform in the ocean, and instead was lost during descent.

Landing Attempts

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

Until now, only SpaceX has managed that feat.

Industry Competition

The competing companies of billionaires Musk and Bezos are locked in a commercial space race that has grown more intense lately, as NASA opened up bids for its lunar exploration program, complaining that one company was falling behind schedule.

The current administration has seen the government push NASA to speed up its timeline to send a crewed mission to the lunar surface in competition against China.

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

“More launches means more ideas in orbit,” a former NASA chief technologist stated. “It can’t be a bad thing to have the competitor, even not in the lead.”