SpaceX postponed its planned launch of a Falcon 9 rocket on June 20, which was scheduled to put six new small satellites into orbit for Orbcomm Inc.
The rocket was set for a 6:08 p.m. EDT liftoff from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida when engineers detected a problem with its upper-stage engine, according to Falcon 9 product director John Insprucker.
Insprucker confirmed the issue during a launch webcast.
Flight directors then reset countdown clocks to the end of a 53-minute launch opportunity, but ran out of time to assess the problem.
"Clock just running out of time to give the team enough minutes to evaluate the data we've been looking at for the last hour," Insprucker said.
The next launch window opens at approximately 5:46 p.m. EDT today, June 21.
The launch would be SpaceX's 10th Falcon 9 mission, which will put six of Orbcomm's 17 next-generation satellites into orbit about 500 miles above Earth.
"We help commercial companies monitor their assets," Orbcomm Chief Executive Marc Eisenberg said in an interview, according to Reuters.
Orbcomm provides machine-to-machine services.
The new satellites were built by Sierra Nevada Corp and Boeing Co, according to Reuters. They will join Orbcomm's existing 25-member network.
"We're launching directly into that hole in the sky so the network is going to get dramatically quicker," Eisenberg said. "We've got a great base of customers and we need to show them that there are years of service that Orbcomm is going to continue to supply," Eisenberg said. "Machine-to-machine communications - or the 'Internet of things' - has really picked up over time. It's just kind of hitting its stride now."
Orbcomm is paying $47 million for two Falcon 9 flights, according to Reuters. The second flight is slated for launch before the end of 2014.
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