NASA
Astra earlier launched two weather cube satellites named TROPICS for NASA to low earth orbit. At first, everything went smoothly from the launch process to the separation of the upper and lower stages of the rocket.However, just as the rocket was about to enter orbit in the final stage, the upper stage rocket unexpectedly stalled.making TROPICS unable to enter orbit and burning up in the atmosphere with the upper stage rocket.
TROPICS is a miniature cube satellite group created by NASA. It was originally a set of 6 pieces, each of which is 3U (30cm x 10cm x 10cm) in size. The main work is to observe the atmosphere in the microwave frequency band, which is helpful for typhoon, Continuous observations of the structure and development of hurricanes, etc. The six satellites are scheduled to be launched in pairs into three different orbits, making it ideal for small launch vehicles like Astra, but now only four remain after the failed launch. NASA is saying that the frequency of coverage on the ground of the TROPICS satellite constellation after two less satellites will be reduced, but even with only four satellites, it is still far beyond the amount of information that the existing satellites can provide.
This is the eighth rocket Astra has attempted to launch into orbit, and the seventh after one failed to launch due to fire on the launch pad.Only two of the seven rockets launched successfully, and only one of the three rockets launched this year – the other failed in February, when the sameThe ELaNa 41 fairing launched for NASA failed to separate properlyso that the ignited upper stage rocket rushed into the fairing, and then crashed out of control.
It is not uncommon for rocket companies to continue to face failures in the initial stages. For example, SpaceX’s Falcon 1 failed three times in a row at the beginning, and Rocket Lab’s earliest three rockets also failed to launch, but the main big problems were solved. After that, the next launch should gradually be on orbit. However, Astra still has more failures and less successes, which makes people feel a little worried about its prospects. If it doesn’t get on track as soon as possible, it will be more difficult to restore customer confidence in Astra in the future.