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The aerospace company, founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, had to delay the highly anticipated liftoff of its powerful launch vehicle on the weekend due to adverse weather factors at Cape Canaveral.

Mission Postponement Causes

Precipitation and a technical problem on the ground led to initial delays, then came thick clouds as the narrow time frame for launch closed, forcing managers to reschedule the rocket’s planned second mission.

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

Rescheduled Attempt

To relieve traffic in the skies amid the government funding gap, the Federal Aviation Administration is limiting private space launches from Monday.

After scrubbing the launch, the company said on Sunday evening that, working alongside the FAA, it was targeting another attempt as early as midweek within a time slot of afternoon hours EST.

Mission Objectives

Upon successful liftoff, the 98-meter tall launch vehicle will transport the US space agency's Escapade twin spacecraft to the Red Planet, to study the Martian atmospheric past with the eventual hope of human exploration.

Blue Origin’s launch will also serve as a key test of its ability to perform booster recovery, which would represent a technical breakthrough for the company if accomplished.

Previous Flight

The rocket's first launch in the start of the year was marked as a success, as its payload reached space and successfully performed tests.

But its first-stage booster, which was meant to be reusable, failed to make its landing on a platform in the ocean, and ended up destroyed during descent.

Recovery Efforts

In its second effort Blue Origin will make another attempt to recover the booster stage.

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

Space Race

Rival firms of billionaires Bezos and Musk are locked in a private sector space competition that recently escalated, as the space agency opened up bids for its planned moon mission, complaining that one company was lagging behind.

The current administration has involved the administration pile pressure on the agency to speed up its timeline to launch astronauts to the lunar surface amid a race with China.

More rivalry between SpaceX and Blue Origin could “give us more choices with regard to launch.”

“Additional missions means greater innovation in orbit,” a former NASA chief technologist said. “It isn't a bad thing to have the competitor, even not in the lead.”