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The aerospace company, founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, was forced to delay the highly anticipated launch of its powerful launch vehicle on Sunday because of unfavorable weather conditions at Cape Canaveral.

Mission Postponement Reasons

Rainfall and a technical problem on the ground caused initial delays, then came thick clouds as the 88-minute launch window ended, forcing managers to reschedule the rocket’s planned second mission.

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

Rescheduled Attempt

To ease airspace congestion amid the government funding gap, the aviation regulator is restricting commercial rocket liftoffs starting Monday.

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

Mission Objectives

When it eventually launches, the 322-foot New Glenn rocket will transport NASA’s Escapade twin spacecraft to Mars, to study the Martian atmospheric past with the long-term goal of sending people there.

Blue Origin’s launch will also serve as a crucial trial of whether it can achieve reusable rocket landing, which would represent a technical breakthrough for the company if successful.

Earlier Mission

New Glenn’s inaugural flight 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 designed as recoverable, did not stick its landing on a platform in the ocean, and ended up destroyed during descent.

Landing Attempts

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

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

Space Race

The competing companies of billionaires Bezos and Musk are engaged in a private sector space competition that recently escalated, as the space agency began accepting proposals for its lunar exploration program, complaining that SpaceX was lagging behind.

The current administration has seen the government pile pressure on NASA to accelerate its progress to launch astronauts to the Moon amid a race with China.

More rivalry 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 said. “It isn't a negative to have the competitor, even not in the lead.”