SpaceX cancels rocket launch for a third time

Turns out third time wasn’t the charm.

After nearly an hour of delays Sunday, SpaceX scrubbed its Falcon 9 rocket launch — again — just moments before it was slated to blast off at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

In a tweet, SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk blamed the decision on a “low thrust alarm.”

“Rising oxygen temps due to hold for boat and helium bubble triggered alarm,” Musk said in the tweet.

The final scrub call came at 4: 34 p. m. PST. It was the Hawthorne company’s third such delay in the last week.

About 3: 45 p. m., just one minute and 33 seconds before its original scheduled liftoff time, a voice intoned, “Hold, hold, hold.”

Musk tweeted several minutes later that the Air Force had placed the launch on hold because of a boat that had entered the “keep out zone.”

John Insprucker, Falcon 9’ s product director, said on the live webcast of the event that SpaceX did not have another launch date planned.

He said the rocket was safe and had gone through a “standard recovery sequence.”

The Falcon 9 was intended to deliver a commercial communications satellite into orbit.

The satellite, SES- 9, will provide services such as broadcasting and video capabilities, maritime connectivity and high- speed broadband for more than 20 countries in the Asia- Pacific region. It is owned by Luxembourg- based satellite operator SES.

SpaceX also hoped to place the rocket on a drone ship in the ocean, though it had predicted that it wouldn’t stick the landing.

The rocket will use a lot of fuel to push the satellite into a high orbit near the equator, and the f irst- stage booster will also face the additional challenge of turning itself around and correcting its course to land on the drone ship.