Says The System Performed As Designed, Proving The Booster's Reliability

While SpaceX celebrates its successful launch to the International Space Station Sunday night, the launch was not without a problem. Fortunately for the company, and probably for the commercial space industry as a whole, the engine problem experienced by the spacecraft as it lifted the Dragon resupply vehicle into orbit did not cause the mission to fail.

SpaceX video shows one of the engines appearing to come apart during the launch. SpaceX issued a statement Sunday night saying that the incident proves the reliability of the launch system.

“Falcon 9 detected an anomaly on one of the nine engines and shut it down. As designed, the flight computer then recomputed a new ascent profile in realtime to reach the target orbit, which is why the burn times were a bit longer," the statement said. "Like Saturn V, which experienced engine loss on two flights, the Falcon 9 is designed to handle an engine flameout and still complete its mission. I believe F9 is the only rocket flying today that, like a modern airliner, is capable of completing a flight successfully even after losing an engine. There was no effect on Dragon or the Space Station resupply mission.”

In an additional statement released Monday, SpaceX said that initial data suggests that one of the rocket's nine Merlin engines, Engine 1, lost pressure suddenly and an engine shutdown command was issued. "We know the engine did not explode, because we continued to receive data from it. Panels designed to relieve pressure within the engine bay were ejected to protect the stage and other engines," the statement read. "Our review of flight data indicates that neither the rocket stage nor any of the other eight engines were negatively affected by this event."

The statement went on to say that it is worth noting that Falcon 9 shuts down two of its engines to limit acceleration to 5 g's even on a fully nominal flight.

"The rocket could therefore have lost another engine and still completed its mission. We will continue to review all flight data in order to understand the cause of the anomaly, and will devote the resources necessary to identify the problem and apply those lessons to future flights. We will provide additional information as it becomes available."

Dragon is expected to begin its approach to the station on October 10, where it will be grappled and berthed by Akihiko Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and Expedition 33 Commander Sunita Williams of NASA. Over the following weeks, the crew will unload Dragon's payload and reload it with cargo to be returned to Earth. Splashdown is targeted for October 28.

(Image from SpaceX Video)

FMI: www.spacex.com