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Blue Origin, founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, was forced to delay the highly anticipated liftoff of its powerful launch vehicle on the weekend due to unfavorable meteorological factors at the Florida launch site.

Launch Delay Causes

Precipitation and a ground system issue caused initial delays, then came thick clouds as the 88-minute launch window ended, leaving managers to push back the vehicle's upcoming flight.

Rivalry between Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been heating up in recent months.

Rescheduled Attempt

To ease airspace congestion amid the US federal government shutdown, the Federal Aviation Administration is restricting commercial rocket liftoffs starting the beginning of the week.

After scrubbing the mission, the company said on Sunday evening that, in coordination with the FAA, it was targeting another attempt as early as Wednesday within a time slot of afternoon hours Eastern Standard time.

Mission Objectives

When it eventually launches, the 322-foot tall launch vehicle will carry NASA’s two Mars-bound probes to the Red Planet, in an effort to study the planet’s climate history with the eventual hope of sending people there.

The mission will also act as a key test of its ability to perform reusable rocket landing, which would represent a technical breakthrough for the firm if accomplished.

Earlier Mission

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

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

Landing Attempts

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

Thus far, only SpaceX has managed that accomplishment.

Industry Competition

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

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

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

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