Washington D.C. – The May 19 launch of Falcon 9 has been aborted this morning, however the SpaceX launch sequence worked as designed. The Falcon 9 computer examined all the data from the rocket at ignition, and when one engine returned data indicating it was out of line with expectations, the computer automatically aborted the launch.
CSF President Michael Lopez-Alegria said, “I have watched and participated in more scrubs of the shuttle than I would have liked, but it’s just part of the launch business. I was extremely impressed with professionalism displayed by the SpaceX launch team in the moments after the scrub to safe the vehicle. We will have to wait for the team to perform the technical analysis of what caused the apparent high pressure in one of the engine’s combustion chambers and for SpaceX and NASA to decide when the next attempt will occur. This is not the outcome we were hoping for, but far better to detect and react to the problem while still in the pad than to have to deal with it in flight.”