Astra Space Scrubs Launch, Reschedules for Tuesday

Astra Space scrubbed the ninth launch of its Rocket 3.3 booster from the Pacific Spaceport Complex –Alaska on Monday due to bad weather. The company is now targeting Tuesday, March 15 at 9:22 AM PDT (12:22 p.m. EDT) for the Astra-1 mission for Spaceflight Inc. Live stream will begin at T-45 minutes at astra.com/livestream.

This is the first launch for Astra Space since the failure of a Rocket 3.3 booster on Feb. 10. Four CubeSats were lost when the rocket’s payload shroud failed to separate as planned after launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

This launch will deploy the following payloads at an altitude of 525 km (326 miles).

NearSpace Launch’s S4 CROSSOVER

S4 CROSSOVER is a technology demonstration mission to obtain flight heritage testing for a prototype payload host platform. It will test supporting future payloads, including a Globalstar transmitter and an Iridium transceiver, as well space environmental instruments to characterize the radiation and plasma densities to which the payloads will be exposed. S4 CROSSOVER is self powered and operates independently of the Astra second stage to which it is permanently attached. Transmission from the S4 CROSSOVER will begin after second stage engine cutoff, activated by relays on the launch vehicle, and will operate until demise, which is expected to occur within a few weeks after launch.

Portland State Aerospace Society’s OreSat0

Re-manifested from SXRS-6 / Transporter-3, OreSat0 is a fully open source CubeSat satellite system built from scratch by students at Portland State University. Slated to be Oregon’s first satellite, the 1U CubeSat provides flight heritage for the modular, expandable, open source, and education-friendly OreSat bus. OreSat0 paves the way for OreSat, a NASA CubeSat Launch Initiative program 2U CubeSat with a global climate science and STEM outreach mission. This second CubeSat will help refine global climate models by measuring the global distribution of high altitude cirrus clouds.