Astra Space has gone 0 out of 2 in its attempts to succeed from the Space Coast, and the latest is supposed to be the first of three launches this summer for NASA to launch into orbit several tracking satellites. hurricanes.
Sunday’s failure saw Astra’s 3.3 rocket take off from the Cape Canaveral space force station in what appeared to be a good launch only to be thwarted because its second stage did not put its payload. useful of two satellites in the desired orbit, which led to their destruction. back to Earth.
NASA officials, however, say not all is lost on the general TROPICS project, which means the structure of observations resolved in times of precipitation and the intensity of the storm with a constellation of small sats.
“TROPICS is part of NASA’s Venture program for lower cost and higher risk missions: payloads that tolerate relatively high risk and serve as the ideal platform for innovation. For TROPICS: Four out of six small satellites are needed for the mission to work, “said Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s associate administrator for the direction of the Science Mission.
So while the first two satellites were destroyed, Astra Space officials said they hoped to find out the problem and be able to fulfill the rest of their $ 7.8 million contract by launching the last four satellites.
“The next two releases should work,” said Christ Kemp, co-founder and CEO of Astra. “Our team understands what’s at stake.”
To date, the Alameda, California-based company has only successfully completed two orbital flights, both from an Alaska spaceport. The last time it tried to fly from Florida, also as part of a NASA mission, the company’s rocket also failed in the second stage, which caused the destruction of the four small satellites. which he wanted for three universities as well as the Johnson. Space Center.
The post-launch investigation of the company, however, identified two problems that it was able to solve and then successfully carry out on a March flight from Alaska, even though it was for private customers. Its only other successful flight took place last November, a demonstration flight for the U.S. Space Force.
The failure of TROPICS was the tenth rocket launched for the company founded in 2016. The shares of the listed company (NASDAQ: ASTR), which was close to $ 20 per share in February 2021, have been falling since then, dropping to its lowest value ever. , reaching $ 1.42 in the first hour of trading on Monday before rebounding slightly. It closed at $ 1.54, up nearly 24% for the day.
Both the February and last weekend crashes were under NASA contracts designed to help new rocket companies. Other commercial companies that have been awarded contracts to blow up NASA’s hardware in what they call high-risk missions include Virgin Orbit, Rocket Lab, Relativity Space and Firefly.
Not all of them have had their first launches yet, but both Virgin Orbit and Rocket Lab saw at least one bug in the deployment of the early mission, but none with such a significant payload loss. Even SpaceX, which has not had a mission failure since 2016, was unsuccessful in its first three rocket attempts, which nearly wiped out Elon Musk’s rocket company.
The Orlando Sentinel contacted NASA to see what the cost of the lost satellites was in both the February and TROPICS missions, and whether taxpayers and other customers would be compensated for launch errors. NASA did not provide answers to these questions.
Instead, Zurbuchen reiterated that part of these missions is to give new rocket companies a financial reason to do business.
“While we’re disappointed right now, we know: there’s value in taking risks in our overall NASA science portfolio because innovation is needed to lead,” he said.
“I am confident that in the future we will be able to use this valuable launching capability to explore the unknown and give others the same opportunity to inspire the world through discovery,” he added.
On Twitter, Kemp stated his company’s commitment to moving forward.
“This mission means a lot to our team. We are focusing our team’s energy on deeply understanding the root cause, correcting it, and completing the TROPICS mission,” he said.
Zurbuchen responded with an encouraging comment: “We are also looking forward to completing the TROPICS mission. Good luck!”
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