The Astra rocket, carrying two small hurricane-tracking satellites for NASA, failed to reach orbit on Sunday (June 12th) after a major malfunction shortly after takeoff.
The Astra rocket, called Launch Vehicle 0010 (LV0010), suffered second-degree damage after taking off from the Cape Canaveral Space Station in Florida at 13:43 EDT (1743 GMT). Two NASA cubes, the first of a fleet of six satellites tracking hurricanes as part of a $ 30 million mission, have been lost.
“We had a nominal flight in the first stage; however, the upper-stage engine shut down early and we did not deliver our payload into orbit, ”said Amanda Dirk Fry of Astra, senior phase and engine manager, during a live commentary.
“We have shared our regrets with @NASA and the payload team,” Astra employees added in a Twitter update (opens in a new section). “More information will be provided once we have completed a full review of the data.” Initially, Sunday’s launch attempt was aimed at 12 noon EDT (16:00 GMT), but was delayed by a boat in the launch area and a fuel problem.
Video: Watch the failed launch of Astra’s LV0010 rocket with NASA satellites
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Astra’s 0010 launch vehicle, carrying two satellites of Hurricane NASA TROPICS, rises from the site of the Cape Canaveral Space Station in Florida on June 12, 2022 (Image credit: Images provided by NASASpaceflight LLC and Astra Space Inc. )
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This image shows the first stage of the Astra’s LV0010 rocket, which falls from its upper stage (foreground) with the blue Earth in the background after takeoff on June 12, 2022, with Florida dominating the view. (Image Credit: Images provided by NASASpaceflight LLC and Astra Space Inc.)Image 1 of 2
The mission of the Astra LV0010 carried the first satellites from the Observations on the Structure of Precipitation and the Intensity of the Storm with permission in the time of NASA with a constellation of small satellites (TROPICS). This was the first of three planned TROPICS missions this year from Astra, each carrying two NASA bread-sized cubes to complete the hurricane-watching constellation. Astra’s three-TROPICS mission to NASA is worth $ 7.95 million for the company.
“TROPICS will give us very frequent views of tropical cyclones, providing insight into their formation, intensification and interaction with their environment, and providing critical data for storm monitoring and forecasting,” said Scott Brown, a research meteorologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Greenbelt, Maryland, said in a statement (opening in a new section) before launch.
Using three pairs of TROPICS satellites, each in a different orbit, NASA hoped to monitor hurricanes and tropical storms every hour. It is unclear whether the agency can still do so with just four satellites, or whether the two lost in today’s failed launch will be replaced.
Sunday’s failed launch is the second accident this year for the Astra. In February, the California-based company failed to launch four NASA cubes as part of the ELaNa 41 mission, a flight that was also organized from its launch site in Florida and marked Astra’s first attempt to launch a payload for a customer. He was guilty of a problem with the rocket’s fairing fairing, and Astra applied a correction to avoid a recurrence.
Astra successfully reached the customer’s payload orbit a month later when its LV0009 rocket took off from a site at the Pacific Spaceport complex on Kodiak Island in Alaska, where the company launched four previous test flights. The company’s first successful orbital launch took place on one of these test flights in November 2021.
Email Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com (opens in a new section) or follow @tariqjmalik (opens in a new section). Follow us @Spacedotcom (opens in a new tab), Facebook (opens in a new tab) and Instagram (opens in a new tab).
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