SpaceX cargo flight had engine 'anomaly' CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., Oct. 8 (UPI) -- U.S. company SpaceX confirmed Monday an "anomaly on one first-stage engine" in the otherwise successful launch of its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft. Approximately one minute and 19 seconds into last night's launch, the Falcon 9 rocket detected an anomaly on one first-stage engine. Initial data suggests that one of the rocket's nine Merlin engines, Engine 1, lost pressure suddenly and an engine shutdown command was issued," SpaceX, based in Hawthorne, Calif., said in a statement emailed to PC Magazine. The private space company's spaceship is headed toward the International Space Station after rocketing into space in a first-time contract with NASA. Slowed-down video of the launch showed what looked to be material falling off the rocket after a visible flare-up, but SpaceX attributed the debris to "panels designed to relieve pressure within the engine bay [that] were ejected to protect the stage and other engines." "We know the engine did not explode, because we continued to receive data from it," SpaceX said. Our review of flight data indicates that neither the rocket stage nor any of the other eight engines were negatively affected by this event. The crewless Dragon cargo spacecraft in the SpaceX CRS-1 mission is scheduled to reach the low-Earth-orbit space station about 7:22 a.m. A two-stage Falcon 9 rocket, which blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on schedule, lifted a capsule called Dragon that contains about half-ton of food, clothing, equipment and science experiments, including 23 designed and built by students.