Nelson says the Orbcomm launch dates are not yet set, though the company's 2013 manifest lists at least seven launches. A dedicated Orbcomm mission would bring that to eight.

The current mishap is not SpaceX's first stumble in the commercial satcom market. In 2011, it lost an arbitration dispute with Avanti Communications of London when it was unable to meet the fleet operator's contracted schedule for launching the Hylas-1 telecommunications satellite. SpaceX was forced to return Avanti's $7.56 million launch deposit, and the Hylas-1 satellite was lofted by a European Ariane 5.

Nor was Falcon 9's engine anomaly a first—during its inaugural flight June 4, 2010, the rocket appeared to experience a slight roll at liftoff. In addition, a few days after that launch, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk said he was surprised by a pronounced roll that occurred following the rocket's upper-stage firing, though it did not affect the payload's insertion vector and had no adverse impact on the mission.