LONG BEACH, California, July 5 (Xinhua) -- Rocket Lab, a U.S. satellite launch service provider, failed to deploy a group of satellites into orbit during its latest mission, the company said Saturday.

The Electron rocket encountered an anomaly approximately four minutes after liftoff on Saturday from the company's launch site in Mahia, New Zealand, Rocket Lab said in a statement, adding the anomaly "resulted in the safe loss of the vehicle."

The California-based company apologized to its customers for the loss of the satellites aboard and said it was investigating the root cause of the failure.

The failure occurred after 11 consecutive successful orbital launches of the Electron launch vehicle, according to the company.