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The aerospace company, founded by entrepreneur Jeff Bezos, had to delay the eagerly awaited launch of its New Glenn rocket on the weekend due to unfavorable weather conditions at Cape Canaveral.

Mission Postponement Reasons

Rainfall and a technical problem on the ground led to initial delays, followed by thick clouds as the narrow time frame for launch ended, leaving mission controllers to push back the rocket’s planned second mission.

Competition between Bezos' firm and Musk's space company has been intensifying in recent months.

Rescheduled Attempt

To ease traffic in the skies amid the government funding gap, the Federal Aviation Administration is limiting commercial rocket liftoffs from the beginning of the week.

After scrubbing the launch, the company announced late Sunday that, in coordination with the FAA, it was targeting a new try as soon as midweek within a time slot of afternoon hours Eastern Standard time.

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.

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 company if successful.

Earlier Mission

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

But its first-stage booster, which was meant to be reusable, failed to make its landing on a platform in the ocean, and instead was lost during the return phase.

Landing Attempts

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

Until now, only SpaceX has achieved that accomplishment.

Space Race

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

The current administration has seen the administration pile pressure on NASA to speed up its progress to launch astronauts to the lunar surface amid a race with China.

More rivalry between SpaceX and Blue Origin could “expand our options with regard to liftoff.”

“Additional missions means more ideas in orbit,” a former NASA chief technologist said. “It isn't a bad thing to have Blue Origin, even trailing behind.”