The Dragon mission dates are likely to be adjusted in response to the Day One difficulties. The schedule will be driven by plans for three of the station’s current crew—Ford, Oleg Novitsky and Evgeny Tarelkin—to depart for Earth in a Soyuz spacecraft in mid-March, Suffredini said.

William Gerstenmaier, NASA’s associate administrator for human exploration and operations, offered praise to SpaceX for its response to the problems.

“They were extremely professional through this whole activity,” said Gerstenmaier, who observed from the SpaceX Launch Control Center. “They did everything exactly right with the vehicle. The team in Hawthorne was awesome.”