Astra Space Rocket Suffers “Anomaly” at Kodiak Island Spaceport
There’s a media report that the Astra Space’s One of Three booster suffered an “anomaly” on Monday while undergoing a dress rehearsal for a launch later this week from the Pacific Spaceport Complex – Alaska on Kodiak Island. KMXT radio reports:
No details have been released yet as far as what caused the anomaly or how it may affect the upcoming launch.
At 5 p.m. [Alaska Aerospace CEO Mark] 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.
Astra Space is developing a booster capable of launching small satellites into low Earth orbit for a price of only $1 million per flight.
4 responses to “Astra Space Rocket Suffers “Anomaly” at Kodiak Island Spaceport”
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“No details have been released yet as far as what caused the anomaly or how it may affect the upcoming launch.”
I think a press release saying “The area is still hazardous and should be avoided.” tells us pretty convincingly that there will be no launch.
Kind of a rough start for the company. But hey, better outcome than March 2006 on Omelek island
That remains to be seen. At least SpaceX got Falcon 1 off the ground 14 years ago.
But, then, the first three Falcon 1’s all failed at progressively higher altitudes. The first two Astra failures seem to have been fairly prompt in-flight anomalies and the latest is a misadventure during ground processing/testing. One hopes Astra will yet go on to success after a bad couple years starting out as SpaceX did. But to do that, Astra is going have to start putting some points up on the board before long.
good fortune