Company’s rocket appears to tumble out of control minutes after launch

Hoping to mark the company’s second successful flight, California-based Astra fired a 43-foot rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Thursday, but the upper stage of the vehicle seemed to go out of control moments after the engine started. . The payload of the rocket, four small research satellites provided by NASA and the university set aside under a $ 3.9 million contract through the space agency’s Venture-class launch services program, is lost in the accident.

“Unfortunately, we’ve heard an in-flight problem that has prevented our customers from delivering payloads to orbit today,” Astra Product Management Director Carolina Grossman told end of a live broadcast of the release. “We deeply regret our customers, NASA, the University of Alabama, the University of New Mexico, and the University of California, Berkeley. More information will be provided as we complete a data review.”

In a statement, NASA said a “flight anomaly” prevented the satellites, known as CubeSats, from being delivered.

“The Astra team demonstrated its dedication to supporting NASA’s mission,” Hamilton Fernandez, NASA’s launch services program mission manager, said in a statement. “The lessons learned will benefit them and the agency in the future.”

Destined to carry payloads of up to 110 pounds, the Astra rocket is one of the smallest orbiting class propellers in operation, designed to be transported to various launch sites for quick response flights by a small crew of engineers and technicians. in situ.

The goal is to provide low-cost orbital access for small civilian, commercial, and military satellites that would otherwise have to take on board rockets on larger rockets as secondary payloads. The Astra rocket is designed to offer more flexibility, along with lower costs, to the emerging small satellite market.

Astra completed its first successful flight into orbit last November with a rocket launched from Alaska. Three previous attempts were unsuccessful.

After multiple frictional launches due to weather and other issues, Astra tried it again on Thursday.

The two-stage Rocket 3.3, about five times shorter than a SpaceX Falcon 9, came to life at 3 p.m. EST and moved away from the 46-pound launch complex over 32,500 pounds of thrust.

The five Delphin first-stage engines fired for two minutes and 50 seconds as planned, propelling the rocket out of the dense lower atmosphere in a northeasterly trajectory into a 310-mile orbit tilted 41 degrees toward the equator.

The engines seemed to shut down in time, and the first stage fell, leaving the rest of the ascent to the upper stage of the rocket and its only Ether engine.

The engine started, but almost immediately, a camera mounted next to the stage showed what appeared to be a fall out of control with the Earth below rapidly spinning in and out of sight.

Miles Doran helped report.

In:
• NASA