The company, started by the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, reset its countdown clock repeatedly over a period of just over two hours before eventually postponing the test flight to another day.

Rough weather has prompted Blue Origin to postpone the launch of its New Glenn rocket, citing choppy waters in the Atlantic Ocean, and creating potentially unsafe landing conditions for its reusable fuel booster.

Bezos’ space company Blue Origin started at about the same time as Musk’s SpaceX but since then Musk’s firm has launched more than 400 of its Falcon 9 rockets into orbit and is testing out its giant Starship rocket which it hopes will send astronauts to the Moon and one day possibly on to Mars.