Engineers with commercial space launch company SpaceX were busy attempting to get the firm's Falcon 9 rocket ready to launch with its load of six satellites after a technical problem led to the scrubbing of a scheduled liftoff Friday, June 20.
SpaceX officials said the next launch opportunity would be June 21 at 5:46 EDT, with forecasters in Florida saying there's a 60 percent chance weather during what will be a 53-minute launch window would be favorable.
Company engineers saw signs of fluctuating pressure in propellant tanks in Falcon 9's second stage, suggesting a potential problem with the firing of its engine, as the intended 6:08 EDT June 20 launch time from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station approached.
In hopes of correcting the problem they pushed the launch time to 7:01, but were eventually forced to postpone the launch entirely.
"The clock just running out of time to give the team enough minutes to evaluate the data they've been looking at for the last hour," SpaceX's product director John Insprucker said during a launch webcast Friday.
The payload atop the Falcon 9 consists of six OG2 satellites belonging to communications firm Orbcomm, intended to the first of an eventual constellation of 17 in low Earth orbit. OG2 stands for Orbcomm Generation 2.
"We help commercial companies monitor their assets," Orbcomm Chief Executive Marc Eisenberg said in an interview, giving as an example how the network allows retailers to track their shipping containers in real time.
The satellites in Friday's aborted launch were intended to fill holes in Orbcomm's current satellite network, which currently is prone to data gaps of 30 to 60 minutes when some of its satellites move out of range, Eisenberg said.
"We're launching directly into that hole in the sky so the network is going to get dramatically quicker," he said.
Orbcomm is paying Spacex $47 million for two launches. If the first is successful on Saturday there will be a second one later in the year, Orbcomm said.
The Falcon 9 rocket used to put the satellites into orbit is intended to be recovered following a soft landing at sea, SpaceX said, part of its efforts to create a reusable rocket with a quick turnaround time.
Having such rockets readily available has the potential to revolutionize space launches and space exploration, SpaceX founder Elon Musk has said.
The Falcon 9, built at SpaceX's Hawthorne, Calif., facility, is a two-stage rocket powered by engines burning liquid oxygen and rocket-grade kerosense.
It can lift payloads as large as 28,000 pounds into low Earth orbit.
