WASHINGTON – Petty launch vehicle developer Astra Space just missed out on orbit on its second launch attempt on December 15, but the company is “beyond ecstasy” with the rocket’s performance.
Astra’s Rocket 3.2 vehicle took off from Pacific Spaceport Complex – Alaska at 3:55 PM Eastern. The company did not provide a live webcast of the launch, but instead offered a series of updates via Twitter as the vehicle progressed through the initial stages of the flight, including cutting off the main engine, separating stairs, and passing the Karman Line , the 100 kilometers altitude is generally used as a delimitation of space.
The rocket’s top stage fired its single engine, gaining altitude and speed. However, Chris Kemp, Astra’s CEO, said in a phone call to reporters that the top stage engine shut off about 12 to 15 seconds earlier when it was on. The rocket reached a peak height of 390 kilometers and a speed of 7.2 kilometers per second, about 0.5 kilometers shorter than the orbital speed.
Although he was just shy of getting a job, Kemp said Astra considered the launch a success. “The hardware of this system worked flawlessly throughout the flight,” he said. “This far exceeded our team’s expectations.” By fine-tuning the mixing ratio between kerosene fuel and liquid oxygen, the vehicle should be able to enter orbit at the next launch.
Rocket 3.2 was the second in a series of three launches that Astra announced earlier this year that would demonstrate that it could reach orbit. On its first, Rocket 3.1 in September, the guidance system caused an oscillation in the rocket shortly after take-off, shutting down the engines. That missile crashed a short distance from the launch site.
Kemp said the company would have been happy with this latest launch to endure a successful first-stage combustion. “Most of the team would have called it off for a day and feel like we had a very successful flight because it would have meant that the rocket’s first stage had taken the risk,” he said.
Astra conducts launches with just a five-person team at the launch site itself. That team had to be quarantined when a person tested positive for COVID-19 last week. Kemp said Astra has sent a backup team of five people to take over preparations for the launch. “That team was able to set up the launch system, set up the missile and launch the missile in just a few days,” he said. “If that had not been possible, we certainly would not have launched today.”
This launch did not carry a payload, but it did simulate the deployment of payloads to test that system. Kemp said that given what Rocket 3.2 has achieved, they expect to bring a payload with the next launch, Rocket 3.3. That vehicle is approximately 75% complete. “We’ll be launching it in a few months, as soon as we can get back to Kodiak,” he said.
The success of this launch, Kemp argued, is a confirmation of the company’s iterative approach to launch vehicle development. Ahead of the launch of Rocket 3.1 in September, the company attempted to launch its Rocket 3.0 in March, only to have the vehicle destroyed due to a fuel issue during a dress rehearsal. It also conducted two suborbital test launches in 2018.
Kemp in the call thanked the company’s investors who “ really bet on a strategy unlike any other company that has ever tried this: that we would intentionally fly things we knew wouldn’t quite work so we could learn. of the flights. Today shows that this is the right strategy. “
The company plans to continue to review vehicle design, even after it hits a job, to improve performance and reduce costs. But at some point, the company will produce a set of “a dozen or so” identical copies of the same design, Kemp said.
“This outcome surprised us and is certainly a great Christmas present for the team,” he said of the launch. “It has been a difficult year for the team and I think we all needed this victory. We are just out of ecstasy from today’s events. ”