SpaceX released the findings of a post-flight data review of the March launch of the company's Falcon 1 rocket Friday, identifying eight glitches engineers must address before the booster takes to the skies again in November.

The Falcon rocket roars skyward on its March test flight. Photo credit: SpaceX

Only one of the problems was blamed for causing a premature end to March's launch, which reached space but failed to achieve orbit.

Officials expect the fixes to be complete in time for the Falcon 1's first operational flight late this year.

"Open issues were identified, but no items are anticipated to require major redesigns to fix," said a report posted on the company's Web site.

SpaceX plans to launch their third Falcon 1 rocket no earlier than November, followed by a fourth mission early next year, according to Elon Musk, founder and chief executive officer of Space Exploration Technologies Corp.

"All customers remain supportive, and we expect to announce new customers in the coming months," Musk told Spaceflight Now.

The payloads for the third and fourth launches will be the U.S. military's TacSat 1 experimental communications satellite and RazakSat, a Malaysian Earth observation platform, respectively.

"It depends on how launch (preparations) go for TacSat, but it is more likely than not that RazakSat will be early next year," Musk said.

The March flight of the Falcon 1 rocket was sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, as part of a Pentagon project to demonstrate responsive and flexible launch options for military satellites. Pre-launch objectives listed the mission's primary goal as gathering data for DARPA, with a secondary aim of reaching orbit and deploying a simulated payload.

"Although short of complete success, a significant majority of mission objectives were met from both a programmatic and technical perspective," the document stated in its conclusions.

The disclosure of the review results came almost three months after the second launch of the $7 million Falcon 1 booster, a privately-developed rocket built by SpaceX.

The Falcon 1 was developed as a low-cost rocket to capture a share of the international market for small satellites. A larger vehicle - the Falcon 9 - is being built to haul heftier spacecraft to orbit.

Officials with SpaceX and DARPA spent weeks analyzing recorded telemetry data from the rocket's March 20 launch.

The flight was the second for the Falcon 1 rocket. A mission last year was cut short 29 seconds after liftoff due to a fuel leak.

Because of the early end to the Falcon 1's maiden launch, the March mission served as the first in-flight test of the second stage and demonstrated other key launch milestones.

The Falcon 1 launched from Omelek Island, part of a U.S. Army base at Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. The next two missions will also launch from the mid-Pacific site.

SpaceX said just one of the eight anomalies prevented the launcher from reaching orbit. A roll control problem in the Falcon 1's second stage caused the rocket's Kestrel engine to shut down early.

The view from a camera on the rocket shows the second stage engine and the separating first stage touching during jettison. Credit: SpaceX

Engineers believe a large maneuver after first stage separation disturbed liquid oxygen inside a tank on the second stage. The sudden movement caused the super-cold propellant to slosh, which resulted in problems controlling the roll of the second stage, the report said.

The hard slew maneuver was needed to adjust the attitude of the second stage after the first stage inadvertently struck the Kestrel engine nozzle as it dropped away three minutes into the flight. This problem was also identified by engineers and SpaceX plans to correct the issue, according to the report.

Live video beamed to the ground from a camera mounted on the second stage showed the unplanned contact between the engine nozzle and the departing first stage. The camera view later showed increasingly apparent roll oscillations on the second stage until the feed was cut off about five minutes after launch.

The escalating roll rate pushed fuel away from intake pipes feeding the Kestrel engine like a centrifuge, and the engine burned out less than eight minutes after liftoff. The Kestrel was supposed to fire an additional 91 seconds to reach orbit.

The curtailed second stage burn sent the Falcon 1 on an arcing suborbital path. The rocket reached a peak altitude of about 180 miles and a maximum speed of approximately 11,400 miles per hour, according to SpaceX.

The attained velocity was about 70 percent of the speed needed to get to the targeted orbit.

"Had it not been for the upper stage control anomaly, all indications are that the (launch) would have reach its intended orbit," the data review team concluded.

Workers plan to install baffles inside the second stage liquid oxygen tanks of future Falcon 1 rockets to prevent similar problems from occurring, according to SpaceX.

The view from a camera on the rocket shows the second stage engine firing. Credit: SpaceX

Other items engineers discovered while reviewing data from the launch included an issue with the first stage's performance. Officials traced the main source of this anomaly to incorrect propellant utilization software in the Merlin engine computer, which caused an imprecise fuel mixture in the first stage burn, the document said.

Engineers also found evidence of a problem with the Kestrel engine's consumption of propellant, but it is not clear if this issue is related to the roll control failure that also plagued the second stage.

SpaceX planned to recover the Falcon 1 rocket's first stage after it was dropped in the Pacific Ocean to a parachuted landing. A recovery vessel was deployed to a point 20 miles from the expected splashdown site, but SpaceX said it received the last data from the stage while it was falling toward the sea at an altitude of about 30 miles. A GPS instrument on the rocket was not working.

Data analysis also indicated the poor disconnection of several propellant and electrical umbilical lines during liftoff of the Falcon 1. A pyrotechnic bolt holding a clamp band around the base of the launcher's payload fairing also failed to fire, but a backup bolt was detonated to allow the nose cone to separate as planned.