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Blue Origin, owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, had to postpone the highly anticipated launch of its New Glenn rocket on the weekend because of adverse meteorological conditions at Cape Canaveral.

Mission Postponement Causes

Rainfall and a ground system issue caused initial delays, then came cumulus cloud cover as the 88-minute launch window ended, forcing managers to push back the rocket’s planned second mission.

Rivalry between Bezos' firm and Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been intensifying in recent months.

New Launch Window

To relieve airspace congestion amid the government funding gap, the Federal Aviation Administration is limiting private space launches from Monday.

After scrubbing the launch, Blue Origin said on Sunday evening that, working alongside the regulatory body, it was targeting a new try as early as midweek within a window of afternoon hours EST.

Mission Objectives

Upon successful liftoff, the 322-foot New Glenn rocket will transport the US space agency's Escapade twin spacecraft to Mars, to examine the planet’s climate history with the eventual hope of human exploration.

The mission will also act as a crucial trial of whether it can achieve reusable rocket landing, which would represent a technical breakthrough for the firm if successful.

Earlier Mission

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

But its first-stage booster, which was designed as recoverable, failed to make its touchdown on a platform in the Atlantic, and instead was lost during descent.

Landing Attempts

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

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

Space Race

Rival firms of tycoons Musk and Bezos are engaged in a private sector space competition that recently escalated, as NASA opened up proposals for its lunar exploration program, complaining that one company was lagging behind.

Donald Trump’s second term has seen the government pile pressure on the agency to speed up its timeline to send a crewed mission to the lunar surface amid a race with China.

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

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