(YouTube screenshot)
The company Astra launched a light rocket for the third time, but again unsuccessfully,
During the launch, one of the five first-stage engines failed, so the flight began along a horizontal trajectory.
Nevertheless, thanks to the rest of the engines, the rocket was able to stabilize and climbed several tens of kilometers
After that, the company's specialists turned off the rest of the engines and completed the mission.
Astra is developing a lightweight two-stage rocket powered by kerosene-oxygen engines, capable of launching up to 150 kilograms into an orbit at an altitude of 500 kilometers.
The company was founded in 2016 and 2 years later began testing its light rocket, being at that time in stealth mode.
In the first two flights, instead of a real second stage, a mass-dimensional mock-up was used, so they were suborbital.
Since 2020, the company has come out of the "stealth mode" and began orbital launches.
The first one was canceled, and the rocket was then lost due to an accident during prelaunch preparation.
Two subsequent launches took place, but were unsuccessful. Although during the last one, the rocket managed to reach space.
During the new launch on August 29, the rocket carried a commercial payload for the US Space Force for the first time.
Less than a second after launch, one of the 5 engines shut off, and the rocket immediately tilted heavily
However, after a couple of seconds it managed to return to an upright position.
Due to the initial roll and reduced thrust, the rocket began flying along an almost horizontal trajectory.
Then the trajectory gradually straightened and the rocket went into vertical flight.
Since the rocket did not collapse and remained controllable, the specialists decided not to stop the flight in order to collect more data.
Two and a half minutes later, the stage climbed 31 kilometers and the engines were shut off on command from the flight control center.
The maximum flight altitude was about 50 kilometers.
Source:
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/Kemp/status/1431812555324854272?s=20
- YouTube: