Saturday was a bad day for science, as SpaceX's Falcon 1 launch ended up in a failure for the third time. Falcon 1 is a two-stage, liquid oxygen and rocket-grade kerosene powered launch vehicle, and the world's first new orbital rocket in more than a decade.

Elon Musk, SpaceX CEO, said after the launch that although it was an obvious disappointment not to reach orbit, the flight of the first stage with the new Merlin 1C engine, which will be used in Falcon 9, was “picture perfect.”

It appears that a problem occurred during separation on Saturday, which caused the stages to be held together. The matter is still under investigation, and more details will be available as soon as the engineers realize what happened.

“The most important message I'd like to send right now is that SpaceX will not skip a beat in execution going forward,” said Musk, adding that flights four and five for Falcon 1 are almost ready, and that he's already given green light to begin fabrication of flight six. The Falcon 9 development is still on track.

Even with a failed launch, SpaceX said they have more than sufficient funding to continue launching Falcon 1 and develop Falcon 9 and Dragon. “For my part, I will never give up and I mean never,” said Musk.

The Falcon 1's mission is to deploy three separating satellites that will orbit at an inclination of 9 degrees: the Trailblazer satellite developed by SpaceDev, and two smaller NASA satellites. The three satellites attach to the Falcon 1 second stage via the Secondary Payload Adaptor and Separating System developed by ATSB, which is owned by the Government of Malaysia.

Like Falcon 1, Falcon 9 is a two stage, liquid oxygen and rocket grade kerosene (RP-1) powered launch vehicle. It uses the same engines, structural architecture (with a wider diameter), avionics and launch system.

The Dragon spacecraft is made up of a pressurized capsule and unpressurized trunk used for Earth to LEO transport of pressurized cargo, unpressurized cargo, and/or crew members. Initiated internally by SpaceX in 2005, Dragon will be utilized to fulfill our NASA COTS contract for demonstration of cargo re-supply of the ISS.

Space X is the winner of the NASA Commercial Orbital Transportation Services competition (COTS), and will contribute to help the American mission on the International Space Station after the Space Shuttle retirement in 2010.