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Blue Origin, founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, was forced to postpone the highly anticipated liftoff of its powerful launch vehicle on Sunday because of adverse weather conditions at Cape Canaveral.

Launch Delay Reasons

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

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

New Launch Window

To relieve traffic in the skies amid the government funding gap, the aviation regulator is restricting commercial rocket liftoffs starting the beginning of the week.

Following the cancellation of the launch, Blue Origin said on Sunday evening that, in coordination with the FAA, it was targeting another attempt as early as midweek within a window of afternoon hours Eastern Standard time.

Launch Goals

Upon successful liftoff, the 322-foot New Glenn rocket will carry the US space agency's Escapade twin spacecraft to the Red Planet, in an effort to study the planet’s climate history with the eventual hope of human exploration.

The mission will also act as a crucial trial of whether it can achieve booster recovery, which would prove a major advancement for the company if accomplished.

Previous Flight

New Glenn’s inaugural flight in January was marked as a success, as its cargo reached space and successfully performed experiments.

But its first-stage booster, which was designed as reusable, did not stick its touchdown on a platform in the Atlantic, and instead was lost during the return phase.

Landing Attempts

For this new mission Blue Origin will try once more to land the first stage.

Until now, only SpaceX has achieved that accomplishment.

Industry Competition

Rival firms of billionaires Musk and Bezos are engaged in a private sector space competition that has grown more intense lately, as NASA began accepting bids for its lunar exploration program, complaining that SpaceX was falling behind schedule.

Donald Trump’s second term has seen the government pile pressure on the agency to speed up its progress to launch astronauts to the Moon amid a race with China.

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

“Additional missions means more ideas in orbit,” an ex-agency official said. “It isn't a negative to have the competitor, even trailing behind.”