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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

Astra launch fails on first TROPICS flight for NASA [nasaspaceflight.com]

The first of three flights to launch the TROPICS satellites for NASA lifted off on Sunday during at 1:43 PM EDT (17:43 UTC). Astra's LV0010 vehicle launched from SLC-46 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, making the company's seventh orbital launch attempt.

After a nominal first stage burn, the upper stage engine shut down early. As a result, the vehicle and payloads were lost.

[...] TROPICS-1 was Astra's seventh orbital launch attempt since the first and only flight of Rocket 3.1 in September 2020. After a few test flights that fell short of orbit, Astra successfully placed the LV0007 vehicle's upper stage with a hosted US Space Force payload into orbit from Kodiak in November 2021.

The next launch, LV0008 in February 2022, was Astra's first from Cape Canaveral's SLC-46 and the company's first for NASA. The ELaNa-41 mission failed to deploy multiple CubeSats into orbit due to a fairing separation failure. The following mission, LV0009 from Kodiak, was the first to successfully deploy payloads into orbit for Spaceflight Inc. in March 2022.

Also at Space News [spacenews.com] and Spaceflight Now [spaceflightnow.com].

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