Footage obtained by TechCrunch shows the disastrous end Astra’s Rocket 3.0 suffered during testing ahead of its March 2020 launch.
The explosion, which occurred at the Alaska Pacific Spaceport complex, was referred to simply as an “anomaly” at the time, an industry term for almost any issue that deviates from the expected outcome.
“I can confirm that we had an anomaly on the launch pad,” said Alaska Aerospace CEO Mark Lester. he told local reporters at the time. “We’re running our emergency checklist. We are asking everyone to stay away from the area to allow our crew to deal with the situation.”
Meanwhile, Astra CEO Chris Kemp told TechCrunch at the time that the rocket “suffered an anomaly after an otherwise successful day of testing at Kodiak in preparation for launch this week.” He added that the company’s hardware “was the only thing that got hurt.” He said separate publication that the company would not attempt a launch after this week and that it would “wait until conditions with the coronavirus improve before making another attempt” – when in fact, there was no longer a rocket to launch.
The video shows the mini-launcher bursting into flames. It is clear that the vehicle did not survive. It would be Astra’s third orbital launch attempt.
At the time, Astra treated such failures with great care. When the company came out of stealth earlier that year, it did so with the belief that it could build rockets at such a high intensity and at such a low price that some amount of failure could be priced in: 100% reliability wasn’t the be-all and end-all. target. That’s how Kemp summed it up in a May 2022 interview: “The expectation that I think a lot of people have is that every launch has to be perfect,” he said. “I think what Astra needs to do, really, is we need to have so many launches that nobody thinks about it anymore.”
Astra reached orbit for the first time in November 2021 and for the second time in March 2022.
Astra has been one of the biggest success stories for space industry investors, with the startup going public in July 2021 at a $2.1 billion valuation after raising nearly $500 million for its ultra-low-cost launch plans. But those plans failed to materialize, and after months of burning cash, Astra’s board quietly accepted a take-private deal from Kemp and CTO Adam London at a stock price of just $0.50 per share. The deal is expected to close sometime this quarter, at which point Astra will cease trading on the Nasdaq.
Astra did not return a request for comment on the 2020 launch failure.
