SpaceX Falcon 9 launcher: Launch aborted after engine trouble

Topped with a television broadcasting satellite, SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket fired its engines and was moments away from liftoff from Cape Canaveral on Thursday, but the commercial booster aborted the launch after computers detected the engines were too slow building up thrust.

Engineers raced to understand and resolve the problem, but they could not get comfortable enough to attempt the launch again before Thursday's time-constrained flight opportunity closed.

Officials had not announced a new target launch date Thursday evening, but SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk posted on his Twitter account the mission would likely be delayed a few days.

SpaceX was targeting liftoff of the 22-story rocket at 5:39 p.m. EST (2239 GMT) Thursday, aiming to achieve the first Thanksgiving Day launch from Florida's Space Coast since 1959.

The launch was pushed back to Thursday after multiple technical problems thwarted an initial launch attempt Monday.

Orbital Science's Antares Rocket Launch Aborted - Umbilical came loose

Orbital Science Corp will have to wait for another day after an umbilical came loose some 12 minutes before the scheduled launch time on April 17th, 2013.

The Antares rocket is a 13-story-tall booster designed to launch the company's new Cygnus spacecraft on unmanned cargo delivery missions to the International Space Station. Orbital has a $1.9 billion deal with NASA to fly eight cargo flights to the space station under the agency's Commercial Resupply Services program, but first needs to demonstrate that the two-stage Antares rocket is fit for those missions.

With the retirement of NASA's space shuttle fleet in 2011, the space agency is depending on new commercial spacecraft like Orbital's Cygnus to keep the space station stocked with supplies.

NASA eventually plans to use private spaceships to ferry American astronauts to and from the space station as well.

Orbital Sciences is one of two companies with contracts to launch unmanned cargo delivery flights to the space station.

The other is Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) of Hawthorne, Calif., which has a $1.6 billion deal to provide 12 cargo delivery missions using its Falcon 9 rockets and Dragon space capsules.