Astra simply received some assist in getting its new rocket off the bottom.
The California-based firm introduced in the present day (Oct. 23) that it has signed a contract with the Protection Innovation Unit (DIU), a U.S. navy group that focuses on adopting and adapting industrial applied sciences.
The deal, price as much as $44 million, “helps advancing and scaling the manufacturing capabilities of Astra’s distinctive tactically responsive launch system, to realize the prototype goal of launching Rocket 4 to orbit or suborbit and from the U.S., Australia, or different places,” Astra wrote in a statement today.
Rocket 4 is Astra’s deliberate next-gen launch system. It is larger and extra highly effective than Rocket 3, which the corporate retired in 2022 after it skilled a reported 5 failures out of seven orbital launch makes an attempt.
A kind of failures was the ultimate Rocket 3 flight, a June 2022 liftoff that didn’t ship its payload — two hurricane-tracking NASA cubesats — to the right orbit.
Video: Watch Astra’s LV0010 rocket launch failure with NASA satellites
These troubles compelled some shakeups at Astra. For instance, the corporate had been publicly traded since 2021, however its two co-founders, Chris Kemp and Adam London, took it private earlier this year to keep away from declaring chapter.
Kemp, who additionally serves as Astra’s CEO, alluded to such travails within the firm’s assertion in the present day.
“This award is a testomony not solely to our crew’s perseverance this previous 12 months, but in addition a validation of our imaginative and prescient for tactically responsive area,” he mentioned. “We’re proud to have so many companions who perceive and help the significance of point-to-point area supply for nationwide safety and protection purposes.”
Astra’s two-stage Rocket 4 will stand 62 toes (18.9 meters) tall and be able to hauling 1,320 kilos (600 kilograms) of payload to low Earth orbit, based on the corporate’s spec page. Astra goals to launch the rocket on a roughly weekly cadence as soon as it is up and working.
