NASA has lost two satellites designed to track hurricanes after the rocket carrying them was damaged.
The cause has not yet been revealed, but a live broadcast shows that the Astra launch vehicle successfully rose from Cape Canaveral in Florida before being damaged in the second stage hundreds of kilometers in the sky.
This is the second time that private space flight company Astra has lost NASA satellites.
As early as February, its chief executive said he was “deeply sorry” after his company accidentally destroyed four small NASA satellites in a failed launch.
Astra successfully reached orbit in another launch a month after the crash in February.
Two CubeSat aboard Sunday’s launch, which included a third of a $ 30 million mission to monitor Earth’s hazardous weather, were lost.
“We had a first-class nominal flight; however, the top-level engine shut down early and we did not deliver our payload into orbit, ”said Amanda Dark Fry, senior manager at Astra.
The company tweeted its regrets about the loss of the miniature satellites.
The satellites were part of NASA’s TROPICS mission, an easy-to-use acronym that means “Permitted time observations of precipitation structure and storm intensity with a constellation of small satellites.”
In a statement, NASA said: “While we are disappointed with the loss of both TROPICS CubeSat, the mission is part of NASA’s Earth Venture program, which provides opportunities for lower-cost, higher-risk missions.
“Despite the loss of the first two of the six satellites, the constellation TROPICS will still meet its scientific goals with the four remaining CubeSat in two orbits.
“With four satellites, TROPICS will still provide improved observations of tropical cyclones with time resolution compared to traditional observation methods,” the US space agency added.
What are CubeSats?
“CubeSats is playing an increasing role in NASA’s research, technology demonstrations, research and education,” the company said.
During the pandemic, when access to NASA facilities was limited, space agency officials had commanded their Hyper-Angular Rainbow Polarimeter CubeSat from home.
TROPICS is what NASA calls an “earthquake mission,” meaning it is a “science-oriented, competitively selected, low-cost mission” that has given the space agency the opportunity to invest in innovative Earth science.
The failed launch in February carried four small satellites as part of NASA’s ELaNa 41 (Educational Nanosatellite Launch) mission, not TROPICS.
NASA describes ELaNa as “an exciting initiative … to attract and retain students in science, technology, engineering and math.”
The goal is to create small satellites of units measuring only 10 cm in cubes, although satellites can be made up of two, three or six units – each weighing less than 1.33 kg, according to NASA.
Three of the lost satellites were made by universities, while one was made by NASA’s Johnson Space Center.
All CubeSats released as part of the program are experimental rather than commercial.
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