Astra set up a rocket launch with five people and entered orbit within seconds

To be honest, the Astra’s first attempt at launch in September wasn’t that impressive. Within 10 or 15 seconds of launch, Rocket 3.1 began to drift off course and had to be ordered to shut down before flying out of its safety corridor.

After the flight, Astra’s leaders put a brave face on the short mission, saying they were “quite happy” with the missile’s performance, thinking they were dealing with a software problem rather than a hardware one. Still, it didn’t exactly inspire confidence in the four-year company. The COVID-19 pandemic started to flare up around the world, fundraising was tight in the industry, and it looked like Astra may have a long way to go before heading into space.

But amid these dark times, Astra’s team of about 100 employees put their heads and masks on and plowed forward. In doing this, they worked a miracle of sorts: prepared Rocket 3.2 and brought it to the company’s launch site in Alaska in less than three months.

This in itself is quite a remarkable achievement. Compared to other commercially developed small missiles, three months is the blink of an eye. Northrop Grumman took 15 months between the flight of its first and second Pegasus missiles; SpaceX took a year between the first two Falcon 1 missions; and Rocket Lab took eight months between the first and second Electron flights.

Bad weather prevented launch attempts on Fridays and weekends, but by Tuesday the turns over the spaceport in Kodiak, Alaska, were swinging. At 12:55 p.m. local time, despite the heavy skies overhead, conditions were acceptable, and the missile with its five main engines roared to life.

This time there were no problems with the missile’s takeoff. It followed its flight trajectory almost to death. A few minutes after the flight, the main engines shut off and the second stage fell apart. The engine burned too. This upper stage then burned all of its propellant and simulated the deployment of a payload in space.

Unfortunately, Rocket 3.2 did not reach a job. The company had not yet gotten the kerosene / oxidant mixture quite right – something that is difficult to test on the ground – and ended up with excess liquid oxygen. If the top stage had burned kerosene for a few more seconds, the top stage would have reached orbit. As it was, the booster peaked at a peak of 390 km above the Earth’s surface.

“It’s really hard for us to digest the outcome here,” Chris Kemp, Astra’s CEO and co-founder of the company, admitted speaking to reporters. While he said the company could still raise money during the pandemic, he admitted that this successful flight would unlock contracts and give Astra more access to less expensive capital. “It’s a very nice Christmas present for the team as we go into the holidays,” he said.

Taking the next step

The company’s next booster, Rocket 3.3, is already 75 percent complete, Kemp said. Based on an initial evaluation of Tuesday’s flight, this missile will not require any major hardware or software changes. Instead, the company will adjust the fuel mix in the top stage to provide the performance needed to put a small charge into orbit. He wouldn’t say how big a Rocket 3.3 payload could likely be. However, Astra has a client for the mission and it will be launched in “a few months”. It has clients for more than a dozen missions and now expects to sign more.

Astra was established to provide small satellites with fast and low-cost access to space. The quick turnaround between the first and second flight suggests it can deliver on this promise. Also impressive is that the company only needs five people to set up its launch site. At Kodiak, Astra has a concrete pad and a tent. A week before the missile was launched, the launcher, propellant, and other equipment arrived in four shipping containers from California. A team of five people set up the launch system and employees at Astra’s headquarters in Alameda, California controlled the launch via cloud computing.

This flexible launch approach, requiring a minimal amount of infrastructure, is the kind that the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency tried to advance through its launch challenge. The contest ended without a winner earlier this year, but Astra came the closest to claiming the prize.

“I am pleased to see Astra achieve most of their goals on this flight after seeing their team work hard,” said Todd Master, who managed the launch challenge for DARPA. “A diversity of launchers with a range of capabilities and prices predicts interesting possibilities for future use of the Ministry of Defense.”

Ad image by John Kraus for Astra