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The aerospace company, founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, had to delay the highly anticipated launch of its powerful launch vehicle on Sunday due to adverse weather conditions at the Florida launch site.

Launch Delay Reasons

Precipitation and a technical problem on the ground led to early setbacks, followed by thick clouds as the 88-minute launch window closed, leaving mission controllers to reschedule the vehicle's upcoming flight.

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

New Launch Window

To relieve airspace congestion amid the US federal government shutdown, the Federal Aviation Administration is restricting commercial rocket liftoffs from Monday.

After scrubbing the mission, the company said on Sunday evening that, working alongside the FAA, it was targeting another attempt as soon as Wednesday within a window of 2.50pm to 4.17pm EST.

Launch Goals

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

The mission will also act as a key test of its ability to perform booster recovery, which would prove a major advancement for the company if accomplished.

Previous Flight

New Glenn’s inaugural flight in the start of the year was marked as a achievement, as its payload achieved orbit and successfully performed experiments.

But its first-stage booster, which was meant to be recoverable, failed to make its touchdown on a ocean-based target in the ocean, and ended up destroyed during descent.

Recovery Efforts

In its second effort the launch provider will try once more to recover the first stage.

Until now, only SpaceX has achieved that accomplishment.

Space Race

Rival firms of tycoons Musk and Bezos are engaged in a commercial space race that has grown more intense lately, as NASA opened up proposals for its lunar exploration program, noting that SpaceX was lagging behind.

The current administration has involved the administration pile pressure on NASA to accelerate its timeline to send a crewed mission to the Moon in competition against China.

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

“Additional missions means more ideas in space,” a former NASA chief technologist stated. “It isn't a bad thing to have the competitor, even not in the lead.”