Credit: Astra
Edinburgh, June 14, 2022 – Astra failed to launch two domes to monitor NASA’s weather on Sunday, June 12, due to premature shutdown of the upper stage of the rocket. Astra said it would provide more information once the full data review is complete.
The car of Astra LV0010 (Rocket 3.3) started after a suspended initial attempt due to a problem with liquid oxygen. The launch seemed to be planned until the payload fairing was deployed and the stage separated. The upper stage lit up on schedule, but about four minutes later a jet could be seen and the vehicle overturned. The deployment of the two cubes never took place.
The failure is the second for this year, after a failed split of the fairing fairing in February. Astra has only two successful flights, reaching an orbit of seven launches.
Sunday’s launch would put into orbit the first two of six time-allowed observations of precipitation structure and storm intensity with a small-hour constellation (TROPICS). The six cubes were planned to be deployed two at a time in three NASA launches worth $ 7.95 million. Microwave radiometer cubesats would make measurements of temperature and precipitation in tropical storm systems with a revisit time of less than an hour. NASA says the mission can still achieve its scientific goals with the other four satellites.
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