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The aerospace company, founded by entrepreneur Jeff Bezos, had to postpone the highly anticipated launch of its New Glenn rocket on the weekend because of adverse weather conditions at Cape Canaveral.

Launch Delay Reasons

Precipitation and a ground system issue caused initial delays, then came cumulus cloud cover as the 88-minute launch window ended, leaving mission controllers to reschedule the rocket’s planned second mission.

Competition between Blue Origin and Musk's space company has been heating up in the past few months.

Rescheduled Attempt

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

After scrubbing the launch, the company announced on Sunday evening that, in coordination with the regulatory body, it was aiming for a new try as early as Wednesday within a time slot of afternoon hours EST.

Launch Goals

Upon successful liftoff, the 322-foot tall launch vehicle will carry the US space agency's Escapade twin spacecraft to the Red Planet, to study the planet’s climate history with the eventual hope of human exploration.

Blue Origin’s launch will also act as a key test of whether it can achieve booster recovery, 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 marked as a success, as its cargo achieved orbit and successfully performed experiments.

But its first-stage booster, which was meant to be recoverable, did not stick its landing on a platform in the Atlantic, and instead was lost during descent.

Recovery Efforts

In its second effort Blue Origin will make another attempt to land the first stage.

Until now, only Musk’s company SpaceX has achieved that accomplishment.

Space Race

The competing companies of tycoons Musk and Bezos are engaged in a commercial space race that recently escalated, as the space agency opened up bids for its lunar exploration program, complaining that SpaceX was falling behind schedule.

Donald Trump’s second term has seen the government push the agency to speed up its progress to launch astronauts to the Moon in competition against the Asian nation.

More rivalry between the two firms could “expand our options with regard to liftoff.”

“Additional missions means more ideas in orbit,” an ex-agency official said. “It can’t be a bad thing to have the competitor, even trailing behind.”