“While we are disappointed in the loss of the two TROPICS CubeSats, the mission is part of NASA’s Earth venture program, which provides opportunities for lower-cost, higher risk missions,” NASA said in a statement on Sunday. It’s not known when the company will send the remainder of the constellation, which consists of small spacecraft known as CubeSats, into orbit.
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More information will be provided after we complete a full data review.”Īstra won a $7.95 million contract from NASA to deliver a total of six TROPICS satellites into orbit over the course of three launches. We have shared our regrets with and the payload team. “The upper stage shut down early and we did not deliver the payloads to orbit. “We had a nominal first stage flight,” the company said in a tweet. Astra noted that the first stage of the rocket, which is located on the bottom of the vehicle, operated normally, propelling the vehicle along its planned trajectory for several minutes after its launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 1:43 PM Eastern Time.īut the second stage engine switched off about 10 minutes into the flight, resulting in the loss of a pair of satellites that belong to a NASA constellation called the Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation structure and storm Intensity with a Constellation of Smallsats (TROPICS) mission, which aims to improve real-time monitoring of tropical storms.