by Andrew Griggs
Senior Director, Mission Management & Assurance
Astra Space

Note: Astra has not yet finalized the LV0008 investigation results with the FAA. The information in this blog post is preliminary until the investigation has been fully closed. 

On February 10, 2022, we launched Launch Vehicle 0008 (LV0008). This was our first launch with a deployable customer payload and our first time launching from Cape Canaveral. After a nominal first stage flight, an anomaly occurred during the stage separation process which resulted in the upper stage not reaching orbit and the end of the mission. We immediately initiated our investigation process to determine the root cause of the anomaly. Now, we can share more about what we’ve learned to date.

By Andrew Griggs
Senior Director
Mission Management & Assurance at Astra

Earlier this month, we launched for the first time out of Cape Canaveral. While this mission represented historic firsts for Astra, we experienced an anomaly during flight and were unable to deliver the payload to orbit. We deeply regret the loss of the mission and are working to investigate and identify the root cause of the issue. While our current investigation is ongoing, I wanted to share a little more about our process for investigating issues in flight.