РН Astra – калифорнийский стартап втихаря делает сверхлегкую ракету

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https://spaceflightnow.com/2020/03/21/astra-readies-for-possible-launch-attempt-next-week/

Astra readies for possible launch attempt next week
March 21, 2020 | Stephen Clark


Astra's first satellite launcher stands on a portable launch mount at Kodiak Island, Alaska, during flight preps last month. Credit: DARPA

After missing out on an opportunity to win up to $12 million in prize money through DARPA's Launch Challenge earlier this month, Astra is gearing up for another possible orbital launch attempt next week fr om Alaska, the company's chief executive said Friday.

Chris Kemp, Astra's co-founder and CEO, said in an email Friday to Spaceflight Now that Astra is not planning to launch Monday, but the company is "working towards a possible launch attempt later in the week" from the Pacific Spaceport Complex at Kodiak Island, Alaska.

The company's first small satellite launcher was scheduled to take off during a two-week window in late February and early March in a bid to win the DARPA Launch Challenge. But schedule delays and an aborted countdown on the final day of the Launch Challenge window March 2 kept Astra from winning a $2 million prize from DARPA, which would have allowed the company to proceed to a second mission later this month with a $10 million prize attached.

Astra's launch team scrubbed the March 2 launch attempt after detecting suspect data from a sensor in the rocket's guidance, navigation and control system. At the time, Kemp said Astra could try again within weeks.

"We are focused on 'root-causing' the anomaly we saw with the sensor," Kemp said March 2. "Whether it's an issue with the actual sensor, whether it's something on the vehicle that we need to better understand, as soon as we address the issue definitively and can get a license and put the regulatory stuff in place, we'll launch again.

"That probably is not a day or two," he said March 2. "It's more like a week or two, but it's certainly not a month or two."

Airspace warning notices from the Federal Aviation Administration suggest Astra is aiming for possible launch attempts Tuesday or Wednesday. The launch window each day opens at 3:30 p.m. EDT (1930 GMT; 11:30 a.m. Alaska time) and extends for three-and-a-half hours.

Kemp said Astra is "managing" affects of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic on the company's plans.

"We are managing the impact of COVID-19 to operations, with an emphasis on safety of employees and range support staff," he said Friday in an emailed statement. "We have a very small team deployed in Alaska and are otherwise managing operations remotely."

Astra's headquarters is located in Alameda, California. On Thursday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a stay-at-home order for the state's 40 million residents.

But there are exceptions "to maintain continuity of operations of ... federal critical infrastructure sectors," according to the executive order.

One of the industries exempt from the order is the "critical manufacturing sector," which includes "aerospace products and parts manufacturing," according to a Department of Homeland Security website.


Astra employees open the payload fairing last month on the company's small satellite launcher at Kodiak Island, Alaska, to mate several small payloads ahead of the company's first orbital launch attempt. Credit: DARPA

At Astra's headquarters in California, engineers and technicians are setting up a rocket assembly line to mass-produce small satellite launchers. There is also a mission control center in Alameda, wh ere managers oversee launch countdowns. Only a handful of workers are needed to set up the rocket at the launch site.

The U.S. military, commercial customers and other clients are among Astra's potential customer base.

Astra's first orbital-class rocket — named Rocket 3, or Rocket 3.0 —  can haul around 25 pounds (55 kilograms) of payload into a polar sun-synchronous orbit, according to Astra. The specific rocket awaiting liftoff from Alaska has been designated "1 of 3."

"This was our first test launch of Rocket 3, and we called it 1 of 3 because we believed that it would probably take three launches before we could successfully deliver a satellite into Earth orbit, so we knew that this was a long shot going into it, but understood how strategically important responsive launch was to the government," Kemp said in a previous press conference.

Astra was established in 2016 and operated in stealth mode until early February, when Bloomberg published an exclusive story about the company's progress and plans.

Astra conducted two suborbital test launches from Kodiak Island in 2018.

For the DARPA Launch Challenge, Astra aimed to launch three CubeSats for the Department of Defense and the University of South Florida, plus an experimental radio beacon to help in the identification of objects in space.

DARPA officials said earlier this month the payloads would be removed from the rocket after the end of the DARPA Launch Challenge and returned to their owners. Officials have not identified what payloads will be on the next Astra launch attempt.

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https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3905/1

Capabilities on the cusp: the impact of a responsive, flexible launch challenge with no winner
by Todd Master
Monday, March 23, 2020

Creating a flexible ("launch fr om anywhere") and responsive ("launch any time") space launch capability is a critical need for the Defense Department, with increasing importance as our views on national security space architectures evolve. Space resiliency is critical to our warfighting capability, and space access is its linchpin, as the means for deployment of our satellite systems. Resiliency for space access is directly created by untethering ourselves fr om one-of-a-kind fixed launch sites, which are subject to range congestion, weather, natural disasters, human-made disasters (like rockets blowing up on pads), and adversary attack. This resiliency is further bolstered by the ability to place in orbit new spacecraft at will, surging new on-orbit capability to provide tactical support to operations fr om space or rapidly replacing end-of-life, malfunctioning, or damaged spacecraft. Developing launch systems that deliver these capabilities is directly aligned with DARPA's mission of preventing strategic surprise, and led us to DARPA Launch Challenge.

At T-minus 53 seconds March 2, the Challenge ended without awarding a prize to the final competitor. The months leading to that that moment provided critical knowledge that will inform our work directly with transition partners across the Defense Department space enterprise on the near-term use of flexible and responsive space launch, a need DARPA has recognized as critical to national security in a changing space domain.

In late 2016, DARPA was closing out our Airborne Launch Assist Space Access (ALASA) program, where we sought flexible and responsive launch using a fighter jet as a staging platform. The program had encountered numerous technical problems and its scope had been reduced to what amounted to a study of propellant chemistry and characterization—short of our goals. At the same time, there was significant increase in private sector space investment and launch vehicle development. Would our organization, the Tactical Technology Office, simply give up on our goals and abandon our idea as too hard or no longer relevant? Or could we find a way to solve our problem by tapping into private sector developments and investment to achieve launch capabilities that addressed our vision for resilience?

Many viable companies had no significant need for government development funding, as they already had private investments, and intended to retain all their intellectual property—often a point of contention in government-funded development. They sought government contracts, or any other form of government recognition, as it would aid them in attracting additional private funding.

At the time, there were several dozen launch vehicle developers at various stages of technical and schedule readiness. These companies were promising to develop approaches consistent with what DARPA had been after for the better part of three decades: systems that could launch on short notice from anywhere on the planet, enabled by "clean pad" designs that required minimal or easily transportable launch infrastructure, and advances in autonomous flight termination systems. It was unclear who among these companies could and would deliver (see "Responsive launch is still not quite ready for prime time", The Space Review, March 9, 2020.)

After extensive conversations in 2017, and bringing together industry and forward-thinking government stakeholders to discuss how to bring our goals to fruition, common threads emerged. Many viable companies had no significant need for government development funding, as they already had private investments, and intended to retain all their intellectual property—often a point of contention in government-funded development. They sought government contracts, or any other form of government recognition, as it would aid them in attracting additional private funding. They desired access to government test facilities and ranges at government pricing.

Multiple new launch vehicle developers assured us that they would launch their first missions by mid-2019, and that they would only need one to two days from setup through launch. We digested these inputs, and created something that would be beneficial to both industry and the Defense Department.

The genesis of a prize-based challenge to demonstrate flexible and responsive space launch

The feedback from our outreach led us to the conclusion that the conditions were ripe for a DARPA Challenge to address flexible and responsive space launch. The industry already had significant investment, a broad technical base, and a myriad of significantly different approaches to solve the same problem: delivering a payload to orbit in short order with minimal infrastructure and minimal pre-launch knowledge. An adaptation of their commercial product was directly applicable to near-term military goals, and as such, the winner of such a challenge would have a major leg up in future military procurements, giving companies the upside potential that could allow them to take the financial risks needed to participate in the Challenge.

DARPA leadership approved the prize competition with two critical stipulations. One was that DARPA would have no role in safety oversight or indemnification—we would rely on existing FAA regulations and commercial insurance. The other was that it would be completed in two years from the time that it was approved in early April 2018. The first of these stipulations was put in place with consideration of some hard lessons from the DARPA's 2006 FALCON effort and work with SpaceX at Kwajalein. And with a fast turnaround, DARPA Launch Challenge now represented a new approach for space launch for the agency: a low-stakes effort that could result in a big payoff.

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Challenge ethos: be safe, be fair

We created Challenge goals to be aggressive but achievable, and most importantly, relevant to military users. Responsive space could be a tactical enabler but only useful if capabilities could be delivered within a timely fashion.

With a fast turnaround, DARPA Launch Challenge now represented a new approach for space launch for the agency: a low-stakes effort that could result in a big payoff.

We debated internally what the right metrics should be. Should we require competitors to get to T-zero in a countdown test, or actually launch to orbit? How many times? How quickly? What was relevant to real-world tactical military use? What was achievable but impactful, given the current state of the art? What were the factors beyond our control that would drive schedule? What were the regulatory requirements? Could we literally launch from anywhere, and who would be the deciding authority? We considered all of these questions in our formulation. We took lessons from prior Challenges, incorporating two overarching principles into Launch Challenge goals from the start: be safe and be fair.

The scope of most challenges at DARPA required little interagency collaboration, as they were largely self-contained. This one was going to involve multiple government regulatory agencies: the FAA, the FCC, NOAA, and a slew of different safety organizations across the Navy, the Air Force, and NASA. We were biting off a lot, but we had the benefit of DARPA's "brand" within the government on our side, and I cannot overstate the willingness of other agencies to bend and flex in order to support our mission of high-risk, high-payoff technology investment for breakthroughs in national defense.

We considered potential competitors' stated capabilities, and balanced those against what would matter to military users. We considered factors that may be beyond their control during a launch campaign (e.g. range availability, air traffic, weather) and made accommodations in the Challenge timeline to allow for those. We examined the range and spaceport required timelines for integration, statutory requirements for government agency coordination and public notifications. We developed a set of guidelines—broad strokes of metrics and execution plans—that we later refined into a specific set of rules as we learned more about the regulatory flexibility we could get, capabilities of our potential sites, and timelines and technical characteristics of our competitors. We decided to require two launches in rapid fashion from two different locations, with as minimal pre-launch knowledge of technical parameters as possible.

Creating the right prize amount was critical to the Challenge. We had budget constraints to work within, and an intention to incentivize modification of commercial products and processes for our specific use case. We did not intend to duplicate industry funding, but desired to provide a compelling enough prize to get an interesting field of competitors. Typical prize competitions are not a cost recovery mechanism for competitors, but afford winners widespread recognition as top in their field, attracting both investment and customers.

In deciding what warranted a prize, we wanted the bulk of our funding to go to something that was directly relevant to a warfighter: capability on orbit, nothing less. We ultimately decided that one launch would meet a subset of our goals, but that a second launch was really required to show the full breadth of flexibility and responsiveness. We created a discrete qualification prize of $400,000, intended to offset some of the costs of applying for an FAA launch license. The real prize purse was allocated to successful launches, with a modest prize of $2 million for Launch 1, and the maximum extent of the Defense Department prize authority of $10 million for Launch 2. Our goal was, across all prizes, to cover opportunity costs for two launches for the median pricing in our initial expected field of competitors.

For the Challenge, we intentionally chose to use the commercial regulatory process governed by the FAA Office of Commercial Space Transportation, both for spaceports and launch vehicles to the maximum extent possible. In a future wh ere space launch will be used as a logistics service, the Defense Department would be best served as procuring these services on a commercial basis, rather than providing in-depth technical oversight and management of those services. When we ship packages by UPS or FedEx, we don't ask these service providers the details of their trucks and aircraft, their maintenance histories, or their parts and sparing plans—we simply pay for the delivery service to be timely and accurate and leave the rest to the shipper. That is how we would like to use space launch for on-orbit delivery.

Finally, we had to sel ect sites spanning the range of our competitors' approaches. As we had applicants considering horizontal launch systems—using an aircraft as its launch site or, for some, their first stage—we had to consider sites that could support both their approach as well as more traditional vertical launch vehicles. Within the United States, we considered all existing and projected commercial spaceports, military test ranges, and traditional space launch ranges. On the horizontal side, there were commercial spaceports in spades. On the vertical side, most were co-located on federal ranges, with the notable exception of Pacific Spaceport Complex - Alaska (aka "Kodiak"). This would ultimately have a big impact on our execution.

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Too many cooks in the kitchen: who decides what's safe?

We had set up a confounding problem for our competitors: they would not know which launch site they would be using until shortly before the Challenge began. This meant that they had to simultaneously obtain approvals to launch from any of our candidate sites. Our intention in setting up the Challenge was to use FAA licensing at all of our launch locations, something we had top-level agreements on from leadership at all of our sites. When those agreements were made, the sites assumed that the teams would have a few launches under their belt before the Challenge, conditions that changed through our course of execution. While true commercial FAA licensing encompasses flight and ground safety, in the cases of launch sites located on federal ranges, those ranges have responsibility and oversight for ground safety—a natural division of responsibility.

Unfortunately, obtaining federal range approvals for agreed-upon waivers within the Challenge timeline became a bridge too far, primarily in consideration of the fact that we were working with never-before flown launch vehicles.

US government space launch ranges (both military and civil) have traditionally launched rockets designed with either insight or oversight of the US government as one of their customers. Bringing a new launch vehicle on to their ranges that they had never seen before, with no government personnel involved in its development, represented new territory. As such, the federal ranges struggled with constraining their role solely to ground safety, first dipping their toes, and then diving in, to flight safety elements of the vehicles. With three federal ranges from three different federal agencies (NASA, Air Force, and Navy) with three different sets of rules, this quickly emerged as a potential problem.

We brought all three agencies together, along with representatives from the FAA, to review their collective requirements and come to common agreement on how they could be met. These agencies already collaborate in the Range Commanders Council (RCC), which sets top-level guidelines for safety implementations that are then trickled down into agency-specific policies. These agencies agreed to evaluate the participating launch system at the RCC level of documentation, not the agency-specific levels. This was a great collaboration and perhaps the first time there was a direct forcing function to do so. The collective group came up with a common understanding as to what portions of their guidelines were critical, what didn't apply, and what could be waived.

Unfortunately, obtaining federal range approvals for agreed-upon waivers within the Challenge timeline became a bridge too far, primarily in consideration of the fact that we were working with never-before flown launch vehicles. As such, we effectively eliminated federal ranges from further participation in the Challenge.

We quickly looked at how we could still accomplish our goals with the remaining non-federal launch site candidate, the commercial spaceport in Kodiak. We ultimately concluded that we could stress our intended "hard problems"—short notice of payloads and orbits, minimal infrastructure, limited time to set up and launch—by using a separate launch location within the Kodiak spaceport. Moving 300 meters from our first launch location retained the same technical challenges as moving to a different launch site 5,000 kilometers away, minus a lot of planes, trains, and automobiles.

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The great paring down: wh ere rocket science meets timing

We started with 55 interested companies, pared back to 18 companies through our first round of information gathering, and then further narrowed to three competitors: Virgin Orbit, Vector, and Astra. All three passed Challenge qualification, satisfying DARPA that they had credible approaches that could be delivered in our timeframe and receiving license application acceptance from FAA/AST as "complete enough." Based on their projections in mid-2018, these teams all expected to be launching to orbit within the next 12 months, meaning the challenge would be right at the beginning of their commercial operations.

The Challenge timing was crucial, providing incentives right at the critical juncture of their development wh ere they could make minor course adjustments to stay both "flexible" and "responsive," before they became too entrenched in a business model that just favored one or two fixed launch locations with a large customer backlog to fulfill.

We've been asked if we would have another Launch Challenge. The answer is no, and for a good reason.

Ultimately, development timelines pushed all of our competitors' schedules to the right—not an uncommon reality in new launch vehicle development. As a result of this, by the time we got to Challenge execution, we had just one competitor remaining that was both ready and willing to launch in our timeline. Astra took a business risk, shifted their intended public engagement timeline, and opted to execute its first orbital launch attempt in the public spotlight of the DARPA Launch Challenge.

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BYOI (Bring-your-own-infrastructure): creating a launch site from a concrete slab in days

In Launch Challenge rules, competitors were allocated four days to set up their launch system. This meant creating and checking out both a complete launch infrastructure and vehicle. We intended this time for arriving, unpacking, checking out internal company network connectivity, and completing FAA and range-mandated rehearsals and contingency response procedures. The rules then allocated 14 days for launch attempts, which included accounting for delays for things like "red" range days due to bad weather or communications issues, mandatory crew rest requirements, and technical issues to be resolved. We made assurances to our teams that if they arrived on time, they would be guaranteed no fewer than four "green" days within the span of the campaign.

We knew our teams had initially said they needed one to two days from launch, and we wanted to afford them chances to be successful, remaining mindful that a timeline that moved from days to weeks to months would be less and less relevant to military users. Getting 14 days of air traffic closure coordination in advance was no small feat, and required a lot of negotiation with FAA. The impacts of the current way we enact closures for space launch to commercial business for both air and maritime are significant, and we flexed to the maximum extent realizable. We had some distinct advantages here at Kodiak, which had fewer air traffic routes to work around as well as the added safety benefit of sparsely populated areas around our launch corridor.

We informed our remaining competitor, Astra, that our desired launch date was February 17. This meant that they could begin setup as early as February 13, with range availability for launch four days later. Astra was completing its final testing on their first orbital vehicle, "Rocket 3.0," right up to (and through) the start of our window, ultimately shipping the vehicle by air transport on February 18. They had pre-shipped some of the ground infrastructure on February 14, and their team was busy preparing that for the rocket's arrival. Our rules did not require them to start on our start date but did not afford them extra time if they started after our initial date.

Astra worked through launch vehicle and ground system checkout, erecting the rocket on the launch site within just four days of its arrival. After pre-launch preparations (and a quick turnaround securing of the vehicle for a blizzard), on February 29 (day 13 of 14), Astra proceeded into a launch countdown, which was ultimately scrubbed due to weather conditions. March 1 was a "red" weather day, and despite having been given their allocated four "green" weather days over the course of the 14-day span, we opted to give them an additional launch opportunity on March 2. Astra successfully completed the majority of their launch countdown, and after a guidance sensor glitch at T-minus 53 seconds, they scrubbed their launch attempt for further troubleshooting.

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Flexibility and responsiveness on the cusp: What we did, and what we learned

Astra successfully demonstrated that they had a flexible approach to space launch that allowed them to set up and ready a liquid-fueled vehicle and its entire supporting infrastructure within a timescale of days. However, the hardest part of the Challenge was delivering to orbit—something that was not yet demonstrated.

We've been asked if we would have another Launch Challenge. The answer is no, and for a good reason. Our intention through the Challenge was to inspire developers to create flexible and responsive approaches to space launch. During Challenge execution, we saw one team, Astra, demonstrate an approach that met our intention, with a rocket that appears on the cusp of capability. We saw two other teams whose architectures were well suited for the problem, with Virgin Orbit seemingly on the verge of executing their first launch as well.

We have lots of horizontal spaceports with few vehicles in development, and one true vertical commercial spaceport with many vehicles in development.

These developments are encouraging to DARPA, and we believe we can take the combination of what we've learned on the process side and effectively combine it with these launch vehicle systems. Through our relationship with US Space Force and US Space Command, we have come to a shared vision of the importance of flexible, responsive launch, and we're working to see how we can collaborate on future demonstrations in this mission area.

This requires a great deal of further discussion, but in the interest of brevity, here's what we learned:

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• The nation needs more commercial vertical spaceports that are not co-located on federal ranges. Launch companies need the certainty provided in FAA regulations, which allows the simplest path for transportability of licenses across spaceports. Federal ranges allow for flexibility through tailoring and negotiation, but that expends valuable time and resources that drive cost and schedule. We have lots of horizontal spaceports with few vehicles in development, and one true vertical commercial spaceport with many vehicles in development.
  
• We need to establish clearer lines of responsibility on launch approvals, and eliminate redundant functions between government agencies. Federal ranges that host commercial spaceports need to accept the limits of their responsibility, and avoid conflating safety with mission assurance.
  
• We need a real-time, data-driven approach to allowing integration of launch events with air and maritime traffic. We currently create broad hazard areas that impact airlines and maritime cargo and fishing operations for extended periods of time without regard to actual liftoff times or launch events, resulting in tangible financial impacts. These have been manageable with our current infrequent space launch cadence, but that time is rapidly coming to an end. These impacts can be reduced significantly with real-time data integration from spaceports and launch systems.
  
• We need further investments in autonomous flight termination approaches and space-based telemetry systems. Traditional approaches in widespread use today tether us to ranges and require time and resources to integrate, limiting both flexibility and responsiveness. Autonomous termination systems have been proven on a limited number of launch vehicles, but they must become the norm, not the exception. Space-based telemetry would allow further reduction in range requirements, promoting the ability to launch fr om truly anywhere and maintain situational awareness throughout flight.
  
• We need further investment and process changes in rapid mission planning. Current timelines for trajectory and dispersion analyses to be completed and reviewed are on the timescale of several days to weeks. These timelines will not support true responsive needs.
  
• We must consider how we can build satellites to favor robustness and ease of launch integration instead of dedicating every kilogram to maximizing performance. We used cubesat-class spacecraft on Launch Challenge, which did not require unique coupled loads analyses. This was a big enabler of our timeline and flexibility. Had we used larger, more complex spacecraft, the processes and timelines for coupled loads analyses would have quickly negated all of our plans. Shifting approaches on this will require new design ideas and a recognition that speed of launch integration to enable fast delivery to orbit is a unique and necessary quality.
  

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The Launch Challenge provided critical information that allows DARPA to proceed with future programs based on knowledge of what is working within the space domain, level-setting industry's abilities, and what we need to focus on next. We will work directly with our transition partners across the Defense Department space enterprise to understand the results that we achieved, and drive the nation to make near-term use of flexible and responsive space launch to retain and expand America's military leadership in space.

●

Todd Master is the DARPA Launch Challenge program manager in DARPA's Tactical Technology Office.

[javax]

Кажется прилетели

The Pacific Spaceport Complex reported an "anomaly" on a launch pad during a rocket launch dress rehearsal on Monday. The anomaly did not result in any injuries, according to Alaska Aerospace CEO Mark Lester.


Reached shortly after the incident, Lester said "I can confirm we had an anomaly on the launch pad. We are executing our emergency checklist. We request everyone stay clear of the area to allow our crew to address the situation."


No details have been released yet as far as what caused the anomaly. Lester said Astra's launch, previously scheduled for Tuesday, has been cancelled.


At 5 p.m. Lester said the emergency response had concluded. "The area is still hazardous and should be avoided. There will be personnel on site overnight to monitor," he said.


California-based rocket startup Astra had scheduled its rocket "One of Three" to launch from the Narrow Cape spaceport this week. Astra has not yet responded to a request for comment.


This is a developing story. KMXT will have more details as they become available.

https://kmxt.org/2020/03/anomaly-at-pacific-spaceport-complex-launch-rehearsal-no-injuries-as-a-result/

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https://spacenews.com/astra-rocket-damaged-in-pre-launch-tests/

Astra rocket damaged in pre-launch tests
by Jeff Foust — March 24, 2020


Astra's Rocket 3.0 undergoing prelaunch checks during an earlier launch attempt at Pacific Spaceport Complex - Alaska. Credit: John Kraus/Astra

WASHINGTON — Small launch vehicle startup Astra has postponed its next launch attempt after the rocket was damaged in what local officials say was an "anomaly" during a prelaunch test.

Astra had been preparing for a launch of its "Rocket 3.0" vehicle as soon as March 24 from Pacific Spaceport Complex – Alaska. A previous launch attempt March 2, part of the now-completed DARPA Launch Challenge, was scrubbed less than a minute before liftoff after sensors reported anomalous data.

However, notices to airmen, or NOTAMs, posted by the Federal Aviation Administration restricting airspace around and downrange from the launch site for launch attempts March 24 and 25 were taken down late March 23.

In an email late March 23, Chris Kemp, chief executive of Astra, said the rocket had been damaged in prelaunch testing earlier in the day. "We'll be rescheduling launch," he said, but had not selected a new launch date. He did not elaborate on the damage the rocket sustained.

Local radio station KMXT reported March 23 that there had been an "anomaly" at the launch site on Kodiak Island that prompted an emergency response. There were no injuries reported, but the area was cordoned off.

"The area is still hazardous and should be avoided. There will be personnel on site overnight to monitor," Mark Lester, chief executive of Alaska Aerospace, which operates the spaceport, told KMXT after the emergency response concluded.

Astra has publicly not disclosed details about the prelaunch anomaly or even that it was planning another launch. The company has gone quiet since it scrubbed its last launch attempt March 2 at the end of the DARPA Launch Challenge. Kemp said at a post-scrub media teleconference that he expected it would be "a week or two" before the company would be ready to make another launch attempt.

The company called this particular vehicle "1 of 3" as it was the first of three similar vehicles in production. In an interview in February, Kemp said the second vehicle was 90% complete and the third 40% complete. "It's not our expectation that our first launch will succeed, but it is our expectation that a campaign will succeed if we launch, learn and iterate," Kemp said in that earlier interview.

Travel restrictions linked to the coronavirus pandemic could delay any future launch attempts, particularly if those attempts require Astra to bring new personnel to the launch site. Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy announced March 23 that all people arriving in the state, be they from other parts of the United States or from other nations, must self-quarantine for 14 days after arrival.

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https://spaceflightnow.com/2020/03/24/astra-suffers-anomaly-during-pre-launch-test-in-alaska/

Astra suffers "anomaly" during pre-launch test in Alaska
March 24, 2020 | Stephen Clark


File photo of Astra's first orbital-class small satellite launcher during pre-flight testing last month at the Pacific Spaceport Complex at Kodiak Island, Alaska. Credit: DARPA

A small satellite launcher built by Astra "experienced an anomaly" Monday on a launch pad at Kodiak Island, Alaska, forcing the cancellation of a planned orbital launch attempt this week, according to the company's co-founder and CEO.

The incident at the Pacific Spaceport Complex on Kodiak Island occurred during a pre-launch countdown dress rehearsal, and was first reported by KMXT, a local public radio station.

"I can confirm that the vehicle experienced an anomaly after an otherwise very successful day of testing in preparation for the launch," said Chris Kemp, Astra's co-founder and CEO, in an emailed statement late Monday.

Officials from Astra and the Pacific Spaceport Complex, which is run by the Alaska Aerospace Corp., said no one was injured during the mishap. Astra's rocket was damaged, although the extent of the damage was unclear.

"Fortunately, our hardware was the only thing harmed, and the team is already working hard to understand the root cause so we can improve the design," Kemp said.

Astra was planning a launch attempt was soon as Tuesday to place a small payload into low Earth orbit. Astra's first orbital launcher, named Rocket 3 or Rocket 3.0, is designed to carry up to 55 pounds (25 kilograms) of payload into a sun-synchronous polar orbit.

Those plans were canceled after Monday's anomaly, Kemp said.

"Unfortunately, we will not be attempting a launch this week," he said. "We intend to wait until conditions with coronavirus improve before making another attempt."

"I can confirm we had an anomaly on the launch pad," said Mark Lester, CEO of Alaska Aerospace Corp., an agency of the state of Alaska. "We are executing our emergency checklist. We request everyone stay clear of the area to allow our crew to address the situation," he told KMXT.

Astra's rocket was originally supposed to launch in February as part of a prize competition managed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, a U.S. military research and development office.

DARPA's Launch Challenge offered up to $12 million prize money to a company that demonstrated its ability to launch a small payload to low Earth orbit on short notice, then perform the same feat from a different launch pad less than a month later.

The deadline for the first of two Astra missions under DARPA's Launch Challenge was March 2. After several weather delays and other schedule slips in previous days, Astra scrubbed a launch attempt March 2 due to suspect data detected from the rocket's guidance, navigation and control system.

Three CubeSats for the U.S. Department of Defense and the University of South Florida, along with a space-based beacon designed to aid in space traffic management, were slated to ride Astra's rocket into orbit through DARPA's Launch Challenge.

On March 2, DARPA and Astra officials said the Prometheus CubeSat, the University of South Florida's two Articulated Reconnaissance and Communications Expedition, or ARCE, nano satellites, and the space-based radio beacon payload were to be removed from the rocket after the end of the Launch Challenge.

Jared Adams, a DARPA spokesperson, said those payloads were safely removed from the rocket before Monday's anomaly.

Kemp confirmed no payloads were on-board Astra's rocket at the time of the incident Monday.

Astra says its rockets can launch with a small crew, requiring just days to set up a portable launch pad. The rocket itself, which measures 38 feet (11.6 meters) long, can fit into a standard shipping container and be towed by truck.

The rocket is powered by five kerosene-fueled on its first stage, and a single kerosene-fed engine on its second stage.

Astra designated the rocket "1 of 3."

"This was our first test launch of Rocket 3, and we called it 1 of 3 because we believed that it would probably take three launches before we could successfully deliver a satellite into Earth orbit, so we knew that this was a long shot going into it, but understood how strategically important responsive launch was to the government," Kemp said in a March 2 teleconference with reporters.

Headquartered in Alameda, California, Astra was established in 2016 and operated in stealth mode until early February, when Bloomberg published an exclusive story about the company's progress and plans.

Astra is one of many companies vying for a place in the commercial small satellite launch market. It's just the second company of the group to get an orbital-class rocket to a launch pad, following Rocket Lab's debut in 2018.

[tnt22]

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/05/rocket-startup-astra-trims-staff-to-survive-pandemic-until-next-year.html

Rocket startup Astra trims staff to survive pandemic until next year
PUBLISHED SUN, APR 5 202010:24 AM EDT

Michael Sheetz@THESHEETZTWEETZ

KEY POINTS

[/li]
• San Francisco-area rocket builder Astra cut its overall headcount to about 120 employees from about 150, a person familiar told CNBC.
  
  
  
• Given Astra's financial position, the person said the company's leadership expects it has enough cash to last until the first quarter of next year.
  
  
  
• The company also recently lost one of its rockets in a fire during testing, the person said, with Astra not expecting to attempt another launch for a few months.
  

[/SIZE]

Astra tests a rocket at its headquarters on the San Francisco Bay in Alameda, California.
Astra

Rocket builder Astra, a San Francisco-area startup, recently reduced its staff through a mix of furloughs and layoffs in order to survive delays caused by the coronavirus pandemic, a person familiar with the situation told CNBC.

Astra cut its overall headcount to about 120 employees from about 150 last month, the person said. The majority of the dismissed workers were furloughed for three months, with only a handful laid off permanently.

Given Astra's financial position – it has customer contracts for a few dozen launches and had raised about $100 million from investors including ACME Capital, Airbus Ventures, Canaan Partners and Marc Benioff – the person said that the company's leadership expects it has enough cash to last until the first quarter of next year.

Astra was previously hoping to close a new round of funding in the next few months. But investors across the U.S. have frozen new deals, instead focusing on helping existing portfolio companies survive.

The person added that Astra is making no assumptions about its existing launch agreements, with its financial estimates removing all revenue that wasn't coming from contracts it deemed solid. Astra's customers are worried about surviving this crisis themselves, the person said, with about half of its customers looking to pull out or at the very least renegotiate.


Inside Astra's rocket production facility in Alameda, California.
Astra

Astra is continuing to operate. However, the person told CNBC that only about 15% of its employees were daily working at its facilities last month, as the company took precautionary steps to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

Astra is one of many in the space industry deemed "mission essential" by the Pentagon, with a letter that allows companies working national security contracts to continue operations even if state governments enforce lockdowns or shelter-in-place orders.

Setback in Alaska

The company was preparing for its third orbital launch attempt late last month, with Astra getting its Rocket 3.0 ready on a launchpad in Kodiak, Alaska. But there was an anomaly during a prelaunch test, local officials said. While no one was hurt, a person familiar told CNBC that a fire consumed Astra's rocket – a total loss.

Astra is still investigating the mishap, which the person said appears to have been an unfortunate mistake. Because Astra needed to have a second rocket ready for the DARPA Launch Challenge, the person said the company plans to take another rocket up to Alaska in a few months.


An Astra rocket on the launchpad in Kodiak, Alaska.
Astra | John Kraus

[tnt22]

 Astra @Astra 1 ч. назад

Despite COVID-19, damage to our launch system, and on-going events affecting our country, the team has been impressively resilient and we've confirmed a launch window beginning July 20th out of Kodiak, Alaska!

[tnt22]

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/16/san-francisco-startup-astra-is-going-for-its-first-orbital-rocket-launch-in-july.html

Rocket startup Astra trying for an orbital launch again in July, renewing fundraising efforts
PUBLISHED TUE, JUN 16 2020 12:32 PM EDT
Michael Sheetz @THESHEETZTWEETZ


KEY POINTS

• Rocket builder Astra will try again for an orbital launch as early as July 20, as the venture capital-backed startup looks to crack into the business of launching small satellites.
  
  
• The company has raised about $100 million to date, from investors including Advance, ACME Capital, Airbus Ventures, Canaan Partners and Salesforce founder Marc Benioff.
  
  
• Astra CEO Chris Kemp told CNBC that that he will restart the company's fundraising in the next month as well, which he says is "a function of the market recovering" for now.
  

An Astra rocket standing on the launchpad in Kodiak, Alaska.
Astra / John Kraus

Rocket builder Astra will try again for its first orbital rocket launch in July, as the San Francisco-area startup navigates the coronavirus pandemic environment while trying to begin flying satellites to space regularly.

The company suffered a setback in March when a fire broke out as Astra was getting its Rocket 3.0 ready on the launchpad. But the company diagnosed that issue and will ship a new rocket up to Alaska at the end of this month, for a launch window that opens on July 20. Astra is aiming for orbit with this launch, although CEO Chris Kemp explained to CNBC on Monday that he defines success as a stable flight for the first part of the launch.

"Our strategy here is to see the first stage perform, and then we have two more flights," Kemp said. "We still intend to iterate towards orbit."

His company's rocket stands about 40 feet tall and falls in the category of small launch vehicles. These small rockets have become more popular due to an increase in the number of small satellites and spacecraft, often the size of a mailbox or washing machine, looking for rides to orbit. Currently the small rocket business is dominated by Rocket Lab, which has launched 12 missions to orbit successfully.

Astra has raised about $100 million to date, from investors including Advance (the investment arm of the family of the late billionaire S.I. Newhouse), ACME Capital, Airbus Ventures, Canaan Partners and Salesforce founder Marc Benioff. Astra's board includes Advance senior executive Nomi Bergman and ACME Capital partner Scott Stanford.

While Astra has enough cash on hand to get to early 2021, Kemp said that he's "going to be restarting that fundraising process" in the next month. Astra previously planned to raise new capital in the second quarter but that changed when the pandemic hit.

"That is a function of the market recovering, at least for now," Kemp said. "I think our calculus has now shifted a little bit, because there's been a lot of inbound interest about investing in the company right now."

Astra trimmed its staff through a mix of furloughs and layoffs when the coronavirus pandemic began, but Kemp said that the company's been able to bring back 10 of those who were furloughed. The company now has a total of 119 employees, including eight who remain furloughed.

"We brought those folks back because they accelerated our ability to deliver another launch in July," Kemp said.

Next week Astra plans to do a test of its Rocket 3.1 at the company's headquarters in Alameda, California. Known as a "hot fire," Kemp said the test will see Astra fire up the rocket's engines for 10 seconds.

"Then we pack it up and ship it up to Alaska," Kemp said.


Astra tests a rocket at its headquarters on the San Francisco Bay in Alameda, California.
Astra

Kemp went into more detail about the company's March anomaly, which destroyed its Rocket 3.0 during launch preparations. He said that, "after a really successful rehearsal," a valve on the rocket stuck open while Astra was letting the fuel out of the rocket.

"It occurred during a phase of the tanking process where the relief valve couldn't relieve the pressure fast enough," Kemp said.

The valve is a piece Astra had built in-house and tested "thousands of times successfully," Kemp noted. It took several months of Astra trying to reproduce the failure before the company found the root cause. In the process of doing that, Astra also put in three levels of redundancy so it won't happen again.

"So it's kind of like a big pause button was pressed, and then we're hitting play again," Kemp said.

Demand for launch during the crisis


Astra's rocket 3.0 during launch preparations in Kodiak, Alaska.
Astra / John Kraus

Astra is one of many companies in the space industry deemed "mission essential" by the Pentagon when the coronavirus crisis began. After nearly a decade of private capital flowing into young and growing space companies, analysts say the pandemic froze funding and some executives described a "slog" ahead for the industry. Kemp agreed that COVID-19 has had an impact, saying that "it's made a lot of things a little harder" and created friction in his company's development.

"Things don't become impossible. Things take a little bit more time," Kemp said.

Only about 15% of Astra's employees were coming into its facilities daily in March, but that number has gone back up to 90% now, Kemp noted. A big part of Astra's push to get back to the launchpad is that the company has a huge backlog of customers that are waiting to fly various payloads," Kemp said. He added that the company has not "lost a single customer" during the crisis and has actually "increased the number of things that we'll be flying for them in every case."

"I think that speaks to the demand that's out there and the lack of supply," Kemp said.

A single customer can buy a dedicated Astra launch for about $2.5 million. That makes its rockets competitive against other companies offering small rocket rides to space, as Rocket Lab's larger Electron goes for about $7 million.

Astra's strategy

Kemp emphasized that Astra remains focused on scaling its product. Its first step is getting to orbit within the next three launches. But after that, Kemp says Astra will be able ramp up its production due to the simplicity of its rockets. Astra's production doesn't use carbon fiber or 3D printing, which Kemp described as "high cost manufacturing" processes and "terrible ways to make anything at scale." Astra has brought 95% of its supply chain in-house, which Kemp said means "we literally take raw materials in one loading dock and send rockets out the other."

"It's designed so that we can do thousands of launches a year ultimately," Kemp said. "Our strategy remains: Simplify everything as much as possible, automate everything as much as possible and focus on scale."


Inside Astra's rocket production facility in Alameda, California.
Astra

Despite the company's vertical integration, the COVID-19 environment has meant Astra has had to dial back its aggressive approach. It's spread out its launch schedule, going from a launch "every month or two" to one launch per quarter.

"We'll learn what we can from it and then the quarter later we'll come out and we'll fly again," Kemp said. "You want to keep the cost of failure low and keep the velocity of learning high."

Astra has several rockets being assembled currently, with Rocket 3.2 nearly finished and Rocket 3.3 close behind it. But Astra was incorporated less than four years ago in October 2016, making Kemp feel like he has some breathing room to get to orbit. He compared Astra's progress to that of SpaceX and Rocket Lab, as those companies reached orbit 6 years and 12 years, respectively, after being founded.

"We've been at this for three and a half years. So that's five times faster than Rocket Lab and three times faster than SpaceX," Kemp said. "Let's integrate, test, learn and repeat."

[tnt22]

 Astra @Astra 1 ч. назад

Volume up!
(0:17)

[tnt22]

 Astra @Astra 1 ч. назад

Say hello to Rocket 3.1, our orbital launch vehicle that just passed its 2nd static hotfire test with flying colors. Having completed testing, Rocket 3.1 is now packed up and on its way to Kodiak, Alaska for our first orbital launch attempt!


1 ч

We are narrowing and finalizing our launch window - we'll be announcing that window early next week!

[tnt22]

 Astra @Astra 23 мин. назад

Our incredible team got together for one last photo with Rocket 3.1 before it headed up to Kodiak last week!

We're excited to announce that our 6-day launch window starts on August 2nd and is open from 12:30-4pm PT each day!

#sendit

[Дмитрий В.]

И всё-таки: зачем ей гранёный ГО?

[Плейшнер]

И всё-таки: зачем ей гранёный ГО?

Как-будто "натяжной потолок" натянули на каркас вигвама

[Старый]

И всё-таки: зачем ей гранёный ГО?

Ну надо же хоть чемто выделяться...

[vissarion]

И всё-таки: зачем ей гранёный ГО?

У Astra идеология - максимальная роботизация изготовления, возможно гранёный технологически легче делать автоматами ?

[Дмитрий В.]

И всё-таки: зачем ей гранёный ГО?

У Astra идеология - максимальная роботизация изготовления, возможно гранёный технологически легче делать автоматами ?

А обечайки баков почему циилиндрические?

[telekast]

И всё-таки: зачем ей гранёный ГО?

У Astra идеология - максимальная роботизация изготовления, возможно гранёный технологически легче делать автоматами ?

А обечайки баков почему циилиндрические?

Потому что цилиндр лучше держит давление чем "карандаш". Не?😉

[Дмитрий В.]

Потому что цилиндр лучше держит давление чем "карандаш". Не?😉

ГО тоже должен держать избыточное давление - только не внутреннее, а внешнее. А потом, кстати, и внутреннее тоже - после выхода из плотных слоёв атмосферы.

[Serge V Iz]

"Граненый ГО" могли намотать на каркас из углеволоконных трубочек, купленных в магазине RC-моделистов ) С баками так просто вряд ли получится )

А, нет, там на фото железяка есть. Значит, нечем прессовать, варят из плоских листов.

[telekast]

Потому что цилиндр лучше держит давление чем "карандаш". Не?😉

ГО тоже должен держать избыточное давление - только не внутреннее, а внешнее. А потом, кстати, и внутреннее тоже - после выхода из плотных слоёв атмосферы.

Ну, весь вопрос в величинах давлений.
Опять же гранёный может быть технологичнее, а значит дешевле.
По некоторым, смутно припоминаемым, данным граненые формы лучше обтекаются на гиперзвуковых скоростях. Может ещё и в этом дело🙄
ИМХУ