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Blue Origin, owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, had to delay the highly anticipated launch of its powerful launch vehicle on the weekend because of adverse meteorological conditions at Cape Canaveral.

Mission Postponement Reasons

Rainfall and a technical problem on the ground caused initial delays, then came thick clouds as the narrow time frame for launch closed, forcing managers to reschedule the vehicle's upcoming flight.

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

New Launch Window

To ease traffic in the skies amid the government funding gap, the Federal Aviation Administration is restricting private space launches starting Monday.

After scrubbing the mission, Blue Origin said on Sunday evening that, working alongside the regulatory body, it was targeting another attempt as early as Wednesday within a time slot of afternoon hours EST.

Launch Goals

When it eventually launches, the 322-foot tall launch vehicle will carry the US space agency's Escapade twin spacecraft to Mars, in an effort to examine the Martian atmospheric past with the eventual hope of human exploration.

The mission will also serve as a crucial trial of its ability to perform booster recovery, which would prove a major advancement for the company if successful.

Previous Flight

The rocket's first launch in January was considered a success, as its payload reached space 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 Atlantic, and instead was lost during descent.

Recovery Efforts

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

Thus far, only SpaceX has achieved that accomplishment.

Space Race

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

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

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

“More launches means more ideas in space,” a former NASA chief technologist said. “It can’t be a bad thing to have Blue Origin, even not in the lead.”