The American startup Astra failed to launch four scientific satellites into orbit. Three minutes after the launch, the first stage of the rocket spun in space and its fragments fell into the ocean. He recalls the history of the failures of an American private firm. The first commercial launch of a rocket by the American space startup Astra ended in failure - a seemingly successful launch led to the loss of the rocket and four satellites.
The two-stage Rocket 3.3 booster lifted off from pad 46 at the Cape Canaveral Space Center the day before at 23:00 Moscow time after repeated postponements of the launch, originally scheduled for February 7.
Judging by the frames of the broadcast, the first minutes of the launch of the rocket worked normally, the applause of the spectators of the launch was heard, but something happened already in space after the separation of the first stage.
At the 4th minute of the flight, after the separation of the first stage, the second stage, turning on its engine, suddenly began to rotate instead of maintaining orientation, smoothly moving towards the target - an orbit with a height of about 500 kilometers.
“The video indicates a possible problem with the separation of the head fairing, which, according to the timeline, separates a few seconds before the stage leaves,” writes SpaceNews. It is reported that fragments of the rocket fell into the ocean.
“Unfortunately, we were told that there was a problem during the flight that prevented our customers' payload from being delivered to orbit,” said Caroline Grossman, director of product management at Astra. – More information will come when we complete data processing. We deeply apologize to our customers."
Founded in 2016, California-based startup Astra plans to capture a significant share of the global market for launching light satellites with its ever-improving rockets. To date, the company has made four attempts at orbital launches from the spaceport in Alaska, only two of them were successful. During the last such launch in November 2021, the company's rocket launched a mock satellite into orbit commissioned by the US military.
Today's launch was to cement the company's success as the rocket launched four cubesat satellites into orbit as part of NASA's Educational Launch of Nanosatellites.
For example, the BAMA-1 satellite from the University of Alabama was supposed to demonstrate the technology of a special brake sail, which will help in the future to effectively de-orbit satellites.
The INCA apparatus was supposed to measure the dependence of the neutron spectrum in near-Earth orbit on latitude and time of day. The QubeSat satellite is to test the operation of a quantum gyroscope in orbit, and R5-S1, assembled by the Johnson Space Center, is to demonstrate some technologies useful for future inspector satellites, including for transmitting images to Earth.
Astra said it will investigate the accident with the US Civil Aviation Administration. "Missions like this are critical to the development of new launch vehicles in this growing commercial segment," said Hamilton Fernandez, NASA launch services program manager. “The Astra team demonstrates commitment to supporting NASA missions. Findings will be drawn and will help them and the agency move forward.”
The next mission of a private trader may take place quite soon: a contract has already been signed with NASA to launch six TROPICS cubesats that will monitor the formation and evolution of hurricanes.
Shortly after the failure, the startup's shares ceased trading on the Nasdaq exchange, and after the resumption of trading, its shares fell by 26%.
“A successful launch would help the company join the growing pool of startups offering cheap ways to launch objects into space. And the latest failure of the company showed how difficult it is to join this club, ”writes the New York Times.
“It's incredibly difficult,” said Bradley Smith, who is responsible for funding the Astra contract at NASA. – When companies openly say they are 12 months away from launch, they are usually 2.5 years away from the launch site. Our statistics show this. And out of the first three payload launches, one of the launches usually fails.”
In the summer of 2021, startup Astra announced that it plans to launch small, light rockets into orbit on an almost daily basis in the future. In December 2020, the startup launched a 12-meter Rocket 3.2 rocket from Alaska into space for the first time, although it did not reach the intended orbit. “In the fall we will start monthly launches, next year we plan to switch to weekly launches,” then the head of the company, Chris Kemp, told Space.com. “Then we will move from weekly space launches to daily launches, or about 300 launches per year.”
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