All four planned rocket launches postponed on Tuesday either due to faults or bad weather

Faults and bad weather ground SpaceX, Blue Origin, Arianespace and United Alliance

Tuesday was supposed to be a bumper day of rocket launches with no less than four expected to take-off.

However, all four were cancelled at the last moment due to a combination of faults and bad weather.

A computer-detected fault detected meant the postponement of Elon Musk's SpaceX rocket from Cape Canaveral. The Falcon 9 was expected to carry a next-generation GPS satellite (GPS III SV01) into space for the US Air Force.

Just minutes later, the reusable New Shepard spacecraft belonging to Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin was also expected to lift-off, but was also postponed, in this case due to what the company described as a "ground infrastructure issue". New Shepard was expected to "take a cabin full of NASA-sponsored payloads into space", according to the company.

Blue Origin is planning manned flights and this was going to be the New Shepard's tenth uncrewed test flight.

When it launches, the mission will take several NASA experiments into space, including an experiment intended to study vibrations experienced during space flight, and a novel way to measure fuel levels in microgravity.

On top of that, European consortium Arianespace, using a Russian Soyuz rockets, was also forced to postpone the launch in French Guiana, South America of the CSO-1 military surveillance satellite due to high winds.

Even the United Launch Alliance rocket launch, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin by arguably the most experienced space company in the US, had to be postponed due to high winds.

United's Delta Heavy rocket was supposed to lift off from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at just before 6pm in the evening, carrying the NROL-71 spy satellite for the US National Reconnaissance Office.

It is the second postponement in a week for United. The mission was scheduled to launch last week, but was aborted seconds before lift-off after the computer detected a fault.