ARCADIA, CA – Astra’s launch of the two Tropical Storm Monitoring Cubes on June 12 failed when the top of the rocket died prematurely.
Astra Rocket 3.3, designated LV0010, lifts off from Space Launch Complex 46 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 1:43 pm ET. Takeoff occurred near the end of the two-hour window that opened at 12 p.m. ET, after initial launch attempts were halted less than two minutes before takeoff due to problems with the vehicle’s liquid oxygen fuel condition.
The launch was initially carried out as planned, with three minutes of first stage firing, followed by engine shutdown, payload aerodynamic deployment and stage separation. The top-level engine burn scheduled to last 5 minutes 15 seconds, according to a mission timeline distributed by the company.
However, about four minutes after this fire, a video clip of the rocket briefly shows the shaft of the engine, after which the car appears to stumble. The planned time to shut down the engines and quietly deploy the payload of the two-cube rocket had passed.
The company immediately recognized that the mission had failed. “We have nominal flights for the first phase. The upper stage closed early and we did not send the payload into orbit,” the company said. chirp. We have shared our regrets with NASA and the payload team. Further information will be provided once we complete a full review of the data.”
This failure is the second of three Astra launches this year. Another NASA launch, also taking place from Cape Canaveral on February 10, Failed when charge separation failed, the problem the company tracked was due to a flaw in the splitter system’s wiring diagram. The company returns to flights March 15, Puts first customer payload into orbit at launch from Kodiak Island, Alaska. The company managed to reach orbit in just two of its first seven launches.
This is a launch The first of three NASA time-completed observations of rainfall structure and storm intensity with Constellation Smallsats (TROPICS), a set of six three-unit cubes holding a microwave radiometer for measuring temperature and precipitation in a tropical storm system. The constellation of six satellites can provide a return visit time of less than an hour, allowing scientists to better track the formation of such storms, although the mission could still achieve its science goals with four satellites.
The six TROPICS satellites will launch two simultaneously on three Astra rockets, each in a different orbital plane. The mission-choice orbits – at 550 kilometers and an inclination of 29.75 degrees – increase the knowledge they can generate but encourage custom launch solutions rather than launching them as secondary payloads.
“We need to go into orbit tilted 30 degrees and nobody really wants to go there,” said William Blackwell, TROPICS principal investigator at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, in a video about the mission.
NASA admits, however, that it’s taking on a higher risk with this approach. Astra was awarded a $7.95 million contract for three launches in February 2021, ahead of the company’s first successful launch.
“While we’re disappointed at this point, we know: There’s value in taking risks in NASA’s entire science chain because innovation is needed for us to drive it,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s associate science administrator, chirp After failed launch.
“I am confident that in the future we will successfully use this invaluable ability to explore the unknown and give others an equal opportunity to inspire the world through discovery,” he added.
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