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Patience is SpaceX's latest virtue

Falcon's return to space delayed until January

SpaceX has delayed its planned December launch until January 2017.

Its brief statement is given as an “anomaly update” – an addendum to the rolling blog about investigations into its impressively-large explosion on September 1.

That event has since been attributed to how helium was handled during fuelling. The explosion destroyed the Falcon launcher and its payload, which included a US$200 million satellite intended to carry traffic for Facebook's fake-news-for-the-world plan.

The company had hoped to return to space on December 16, but at the time of writing, one crucial step in the process was yet to arrive: SpaceX is still waiting for a green light from the Federal Aviation Administration before it lights the blue touchpaper.

Iridium, whose first NEXT-series bird will head to low earth orbit on the Falcon 9, isn't fazed by the delay, merely stating on its Website it supports the decision and remains confident in SpaceX's ability to deliver its satellites “safely”.

Here's today's SpaceX update in full:

“We are finalising the investigation into our September 1 anomaly and are working to complete the final steps necessary to safely and reliably return to flight, now in early January with the launch of Iridium-1. 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.” ®

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