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Bad Astronomy [1] has a comment saying the Orbcomm satellite is a test unit (not the production unit yet) and that a second-choice orbit is possibly where it will be released.

[1] http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/10/08/sp...

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I read it as that they have already deployed rather than will be. But yes, the comment seems to suggest that the idea of trying to put it into the nominal orbit was abandoned, the speculating being that the 2nd stage had to burn for longer to get the dragon/ISS primary payload as it should be, and so not leaving enough fuel left over for the secondary payload nominal insertion. That sounds plausible, but equally SpaceX haven't said anything so it's all just armchair speculation, which is fun anyway.

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