Astra Reschedules Rocket 3.3 Launch to Saturday After Last-second Abort
Astra Space will attempt to launch its Rocket 3.3 booster today, Saturday, after a last-second abort on Friday due to a guidance issue. The window for the launch from Pacific Spaceport Complex — Alaska opens at 2 p.m. PDT (2100 UTC).
It will be the third attempt by the California-based company to launch its Rocket 3 booster into orbit. The vehicle is carrying a military payload.
Live streaming will start one hour before launch here.
21 responses to “Astra Reschedules Rocket 3.3 Launch to Saturday After Last-second Abort”
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Upside is the stand looks fine except that QD is going to need some work.
What an AMAZING launch! Really, I loved it! ?
Ad Astra per Aspera
#GoAstra You can do it! ?
That’s the first time I’ve ever seen a orbital class rocket abort to altitude after doing the Atlas Shuffle.
When I see this I almost cried…. thinking to buy stocks of them…
Well, if you think they’ll survive now is the time to buy stock assuming the price goes down.
I’m not a speculator, darling, I just see [a very] hidden potential… ?
(long term)
We all speculate here. 🙂
kudo’s to the guidance system for “holding it together” and recovering…but as the phrase would go on the backyardigans “thats not suppose to happen”
they seem to have had some engine issue
You really understand about it. ?
Looks like it will be a learning experience for them…
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
As failures go, a unique and interesting one. Lots of data to evaluate, no doubt. Good luck with the bug hunt and best wishes for success next time – which I also hope is soon.
Question from a discussion on another site appropriate to the local SpaceX expert . If Falcon9 lost an engine early such that the mission couldn’t succeed, does the capability exist to land it safely with upper stage and payload intact? Or another method to save as much hardware as possible? I’m reasonably certain that early staging and landing the first stage is feasible, the question is about the payload and upper stage.
I suspect the legs would not be strong enough even if they could steer it to the landing pad. The weight difference between a nearly empty booster and one with a nearly full payload is huge.
The next question would be if they could jettison the second stage/payload and save the booster. Probably not given the flight dynamics and programming for it, plus the mass of the unburnt fuel in the booster.
That said, it should have a robust engine out capability. The other Merlins should be able to compensate for an engine failing.
I was thinking in terms of burning off all the fuel in the first stage before attempting the landing. It would still be a lot more weight than the empty stage, just wondering how much over the margin it might be. Of course an upper stage full of propellant might not be the thing rational people would want to chance anywhere near people or value property.
I was thinking about commanding the second stage to fly out of harms way, except to itself, before attempting to save the booster.
I agree that it has robust engine out capability, not that it has been really needed much with well over a thousand booster engine flights. I only seem to remember one engine shut off during boost, but the primary payload was delivered anyway. Which of course does back your point.
The problem of course is burning off the fuel. So the most likely scenario would be to simply follow the flight profile until the normal second stage separation then hope that the landing program is flexible enough to handle the reduced velocity at burnout and not over correct when returning to the landing site.
Alternately you could use the fuel that would be burned in landing to make up a portion of the velocity deficit, basically expending the booster to save the payload, assuming you have that option written into the programming for the flight.
As for the second stage and payload, it will not be placed in the desired orbit because of the reduced velocity so the question would be if there is enough fuel in the second stage and/or payload to correct for it.
Actually, the second stage and payload will achieve the needed MECO velocity. In the event of an engine-out, the remaining engines just burn longer using the propellant not used by the dead engine. The second stage will dynamically modify its flight profile to deliver the payload to the right orbit before deployment.
In a word, no, because a single engine-out on ascent won’t lose the mission. That happened on an early CRS mission and the Dragon made it to the ISS just fine. The remaining eight engines just fired longer before MECO. That was in the days preceding booster recoverability, though.
The effect on landing a current booster would depend upon whether enough propellant remained, after getting the 2nd stage up to suitable speed, for the booster to find its way back to either land or a drone ship. Lots of variables. One would be whether or not the failed engine was one of those needed for boost-back, entry or landing burns. A failure of the center engine would be worst. Starships can obviously land with asymmetric thrust, but I don’t know if the F9 can do that trick or not.
That engine failed late in the ascent. An engine out at one second like this one did could send gravity losses through the roof for several seconds. A heavy weight payload with low margin might not make it. Fast decisions might have to be made on what to save, or if anything could be Saved at all. Hasn’t happened is not the same as can’t happen
The CRS-1 engine failure happened 79 seconds into ascent. From an elapsed time standpoint, that is about at the halfway point for a nominal ascent. From an altitude and velocity standpoint, it’s just after Max-Q – fairly low and slow. One of the reasons the F9 has 9 engines is to provide assured payload delivery even if there is a single-engine-out anomaly. The other eight engines burning longer using the propellant not consumed by the dead engine can assure that. The stage might not be recoverable, but the payload – even a maximum one – will get where it’s going.
An engine loss at one second as under discussion here could drop T/W from 1.2 to 1.07 gee. Or acceleration dropping from 2 m/s to 0.7 m/s which means that it takes three seconds with eight engines to reach the same vertical velocity as one second with nine engines. Totally different scenario from 79 seconds where T/W drops from roughly 2.7 down to 2.4 gee.
BOTE, spending 60 seconds with 8 engines reaching the velocity that should have been reached in 25 seconds with 9 engines will result in LOM except in a very lightweight launch. Even the CRS-1 failed to place the secondary payload with a much later engine out.