A privately owned cargo rocket launching to the International Space Station was aborted at the last second on Saturday morning.
The rocket’s nine engines had ignited, but the computers detected an unnamed discrepancy and shut them down. The next launching attempt will be, at the earliest, on Tuesday at 3:44 a.m.
The rocket and its cargo capsule, both built by Space Exploration Technologies Corp. of Hawthorne, Calif., represent an important step in NASA’s evolution to rely more on commercial companies for its human spaceflight program.
If the capsule, the Dragon, reaches the space station, it will be first commercial spacecraft to dock there. All previous vehicles like NASA’s space shuttles and Russia’s Soyuz capsules were government-operated.
The flight will be a second test in a $396 million development program by SpaceX to develop the cargo ship. If successful, SpaceX will then enter a $1.6 billion contract for a dozen cargo flights to the station.
The SpaceX flight is carrying 1,000 pounds of nonessential cargo, mostly food and clothing.
NASA signed the development agreement with SpaceX in 2006, part of efforts to encourage new commercial space ventures and to reduce launching costs for NASA.