SpaceX Launch News: September Explosion Investigation Causes Flight Delay Until January 2017

Private aerospace company SpaceX was scheduled to return to launching rockets before the end of 2016, but the company announced Wednesday it is delaying its planned flights until the next year.

Instead of stepping back onto the launch pad in December, SpaceX instead plans to fire up its rockets once again in early 2017. The company hasn’t set an official date, but did say it intends to launch again in January.

The continued delay of SpaceX’s return to flight is the result of the company’s ongoing investigation into an explosion that doomed the launch of the company’s Falcon 9 rocket in September.

The accident has been referred to by SpaceX as an anomaly. Researchers and investigators narrowed the likely cause to the freezing of liquid oxygen fuel that triggered a chain of explosions that were strong enough to be felt by people in buildings in the surrounding area and generated enough smoke to appear on weather radar.

“We are finalizing the investigation into our September 1 anomaly and are working to complete the final steps necessary to safely and reliably return to flight,” SpaceX said in a statement. “This allows for additional time to close-out vehicle preparations and complete extended testing to help ensure the highest possible level of mission assurance prior to launch.”

The incident earlier this year caused problems for more than just SpaceX; the explosion also destroyed an AMOS-6 communications satellite from Israeli company Spacecom. The satellite was part of an effort from Facebook to deliver internet connectivity to parts of Africa.

Spacecom sought compensation to the tune of $50 million for the cost of its destroyed satellite in the wake of the explosion, while Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg expressed his disappointment in the incident. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk called the anomaly the "most difficult and complex failure" in the company’s history.

When SpaceX does return to the upper atmosphere in 2017, it will again be taking some cargo with it. The January launch will have the Iridium-1 satellite on board. Iridium hinted at the start of December that it would be ready for flight this month, but SpaceX’s investigation delayed those plans.