Operators of the SpaceX mission to the international space station were scrambling to regain full control of their unmanned craft on Friday after it developed a problem with its thrusters soon after launch from Cape Canaveral.

The Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft, operated by internet entrepreneur Elon Musk's private SpaceX company, successfully reached lower earth orbit nine minutes after an apparently flawless lift-off from its launch pad at 10.10am.

But the company reported an issue with Dragon's thrusters within minutes of second stage separation, potentially threatening its arrival at the ISS tomorrow with supplies and scientific experiments for the six astronauts aboard the orbiting outpost.

"Issue with Dragon thruster pods. System inhibiting three of four from initializing," Musk, the spacecraft's chief designer, said on his Twitter feed.

The issue prevented the Dragon, which is on its third resupply mission to the ISS, from deploying its solar arrays as scheduled, although there was no danger to anyone from the apparent malfunction.

SpaceX, the California-based start-up that stole a march on its rivals in the fledgling private space industry with two successful flights to the ISS last year, issued a later statement saying its engineers were making progress.

"One thruster pod is running now but two are preferred to take the next step, which is to deploy the solar arrays," it said.

"We are working to bring up the other two pods in order to plan the next series of burns to get to the station."

It was too early to say if Dragon could still get to the space station, where it is scheduled to arrive tomorrow morning and spend slightly more than three weeks berthed to it before returning to Earth with scientific experiments and a hold full of surplus material at the end of the month.

Failure would be a significant blow to the company that leads a small but focused field vying to assume ferrying duties to the ISS following the retirement of Nasa's space shuttle fleet two years ago.

Friday's launch, which lit up the skies over Florida's space coast, saw no problems with thrust or trajectory during the nine-minute powered flight into lower earth orbit.

Officials were confident that there was no repeat of the failure that affected one of Falcon's nine Merlin 1C rockets on its launch in October, which eventually led to a satellite being deployed in the wrong orbit.

Gwynne Shotwell, president of SpaceX, said that extensive testing had isolated the problem to the engine's protective casing. "There was a material flaw that went undetected, resulting in a breach [and] causing depressurisation of the combustion chamber, then the flight computer recognised that depressurisation and commanded shutdown," she said at a pre-launch briefing.

Among the payload of more than 1,000kg is food, clothing and other essential supplies for the astronauts on the ISS, along with various biological experiments and hardware, including new freezers for laboratory samples and grapple bars that will be attached outside during a future spacewalk.

The key scientific experiment features frozen embryonic stem cells of mice, which will be grown into live animals to test the effects of the exposure to space and build knowledge for future long-haul human spaceflight.

SpaceX, which holds a Nasa contract worth $1.6 billion for 12 resupply missions to the space station, became the first commercial company to successfully launch a spacecraft into orbit and recover it in December 2010.

It sent Dragon to the ISS twice last year, in May and October, and is attempting to have its DragonRider variant of the spacecraft rated for human flights by 2017 as one of three private entities to have won Nasa funding under the agency's Commercial Crew Development programme.

So far none of the California-based company's rivals has managed to get a spacecraft to a launchpad, although Orbital Sciences Corporation, which also won Nasa "seed money" to develop cargo missions, has a test flight and berthing of its Cygnus craft scheduled for June and its first contracted supply mission later in the year.

Musk, the South African-born, American tycoon who was also behind PayPal and the electric car developer Tesla Motors, has his sights set even further afield. SpaceX will provide the primary means of propulsion, the longer-range Falcon Heavy rocket, and a modified lander called Red Dragon, for Nasa's proposed mission to Mars in 2018 that would lay the groundwork for later human flights.

Additionally, SpaceX has a crowded launch manifest between now and 2017 with ten more ISS missions, a handful of US Air Force projects and numerous privately contracted satellite deployments, including eight for satellite telephone giant Iridium.

Meanwhile, manned commercial flights could be delayed because of automatic federal spending cuts that were due to come into effect today, Florida Today has reported.

If Nasa's budget is held at 2012 levels and "sequestration" reductions go ahead, the agency will not have enough money to pay its three partners, SpaceX, Sierra Nevada and Boeing, on time, the newspaper said, quoting experts from Space Policy Online.

Until commercial spacecraft are cleared to safely carry humans, Nasa must continue to buy seats for its astronauts