Aug 4, 2020 10:35 PM
(This post was last modified: Aug 5, 2020 08:29 PM by Yazata.)
Astra is a really tiny little company in the Rocketlab space, trying to develop an even cheaper small satellite launcher. Their little rocket isn't reusable, but is slated to only cost about $2.5 million. (Compare that to ULA's powerful Atlas V which costs close to $150 million. Of course the Atlas can send heavy landers to Mars, but many customers don't need that.) Astra hopes to be able to launch about 400 pounds of payload into low Earth orbit with their little rocket. Several little cubesat sized payloads per launch.
They apparently hope to try to launch a demo flight tonight 10:00 PM EDT, 7:00 PM PDT, 2:00 UTC Wednesday. The launch site will be one of America's lesser known launch complexes, the Pacific Spaceport Complex in Kodiak Alaska. This launch site isn't used a whole lot, and has mostly been used to launch suborbital target missiles or anti-ballistic-missile interceptor rockets in ABM tests. (If North Korea tries to launch ICBMs at the US, they would come across the north Pacific.)
https://astra.com/blog/rocket-3-1/
https://www.nextspaceflight.com/launches/details/3438
Astra 3.1 launch press kit
https://astra.com/wp-content/uploads/202...ss-Kit.pdf
They say that they are too small to have a crew of videographers to live-stream their launch, but they hope to tweet their progress. (They nevertheless have a very good company introduction video below.)
https://twitter.com/Astra
I like Astra in part because they are based in Alameda, right next to Oakland and across the bay from San Francisco. If you ever watched the Mythbusters, you remember the 'Alameda runway' where they conducted many of their experiments. This is the former Alameda Naval Air Station, which was huge during the Cold War up until 1990 or so when it was closed. Astra has their rocket plant in some of the former Navy buildings, and even conducts rocket engine static fires on the same runway.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astra_(aerospace)
They apparently hope to try to launch a demo flight tonight 10:00 PM EDT, 7:00 PM PDT, 2:00 UTC Wednesday. The launch site will be one of America's lesser known launch complexes, the Pacific Spaceport Complex in Kodiak Alaska. This launch site isn't used a whole lot, and has mostly been used to launch suborbital target missiles or anti-ballistic-missile interceptor rockets in ABM tests. (If North Korea tries to launch ICBMs at the US, they would come across the north Pacific.)
https://astra.com/blog/rocket-3-1/
https://www.nextspaceflight.com/launches/details/3438
Astra 3.1 launch press kit
https://astra.com/wp-content/uploads/202...ss-Kit.pdf
They say that they are too small to have a crew of videographers to live-stream their launch, but they hope to tweet their progress. (They nevertheless have a very good company introduction video below.)
https://twitter.com/Astra
I like Astra in part because they are based in Alameda, right next to Oakland and across the bay from San Francisco. If you ever watched the Mythbusters, you remember the 'Alameda runway' where they conducted many of their experiments. This is the former Alameda Naval Air Station, which was huge during the Cold War up until 1990 or so when it was closed. Astra has their rocket plant in some of the former Navy buildings, and even conducts rocket engine static fires on the same runway.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astra_(aerospace)
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