Close, but no astra –
A similar challenge two decades ago boosted a nascent SpaceX.
Eric Berger – Mar 4, 3: 10 pm UTC
despite the prospect of losing out on a $ 2 million check from the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and potentially $ million more later this month, Astra engineers halted the launch attempt. They thought the problem may lie with a faulty sensor, as bad data was intermittent, but they weren’t sure.
The The DARPA Launch Challenge — which sought to demonstrate flexible and responsive launch capabilities in days, not years, for national defense — gave Astra essentially a month’s notice to prepare a rocket and launch it from Alaska. The company moved quickly, shipping its small booster to the launch site, and setting up the location in less than two weeks. A combination of poor weather over the weekend, and the technical issue on Monday scuttled the chance. “We were very sorry not to hand over a big check today,” said Todd Master, manager of the launch challenge for DARPA.
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The site is in southern Alaska, offering a good corridor to polar orbits. Astra-
This is the third-generation rocket, named Rocket 3.0. Astra-
It has made two previous suborbital launch attempts. AstraOne was mostly successful; the second was not. AstraThat no company won the challenge underscores how difficult it remains to build rockets — even small ones — and put them into orbit rapidly . Moreover, this is something that DARPA has been pushing for a long time, dating all the way back to the aftermath of the 9 / (attacks in
. If it was easy, someone would have done it already. Back in 2020, DARPA created the Falcon — Force Application and Launch from CONtinental United States — program. The Falcon program had two separate goals. The first involved development of a hypersonic weapon, and the second a low-cost launcher that could deliver at least 1, 0 pounds to orbit for $ 5 million per launch. In addition to giving the military a new launch capability, DARPA hoped this would stimulate a stagnant US aerospace industry. A Falcon for Falcon 1
In one big way, the program did succeed. As DARPA began to solicit bids from industry for the small rocket program in May , it eventually received responses. The military awarded nine grants worth about half a million dollars each for design studies. While some awards went to established companies, such as Lockheed Martin, the majority were given to smaller firms like SpaceX. Ultimately, SpaceX and AirLaunch, which aimed to drop its rocket from a C – 150 aircraft, emerged as finalists. Only SpaceX ever made it to space, but the program had been canceled before that happened. Although the vast majority of SpaceX’s early funds came from its founder, Elon Musk, the fact remains that DARPA supported it with some development funds and paid for the payload that went on the company first Falcon 1 launch. In this sense, DARPA was the first government entity to buy into the new company, and support its concept of cheap, rapid launch.
SpaceX would pivot away from the Falcon 1 rocket a few years later, leading to a new generation of small satellite launch companies such as Rocket Lab, Virgin Orbit, Firefly, and Astra. Nearly two decades later, Us industry is close to reaching the goal of flexible and responsive launch, but it’s not quite there yet.
The booster has a mobile launch setup, which can be contained in four tractor-trailers. Astra This is the first orbital launch attempt by Astra. Astra -
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. If it was easy, someone would have done it already. 
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