Failed to reach orbit; failed during first stage burn. This was @Astra's first orbital launch attempt - better luck next time.
I'm old fashioned and think that to call something an orbital attempt it would need to be capable of making orbit.
We have liftoff!At 8:19pm PT, Rocket 3.1 left the Alaskan coast at Astra’s Kodiak launch site. We are excited to take this meaningful step towards orbit!Read more on our blog 👇
WE HAVE LIFTOFF!SEPTEMBER 12, 2020At 8:19pm PT, Rocket 3.1 left the Alaskan coast at Astra’s Kodiak launch site. We’re excited to have our first orbital attempt under our belt!As we’ve always said, we expect it to take three flights to make it to orbit. Tonight, we saw a beautiful launch! Preliminary data review indicates the rocket performed very well. Early in the flight, our guidance system appears to have introduced some slight oscillation into the flight, causing the vehicle to drift from its planned trajectory leading to a commanded shutdown of the engines by the flight safety system. We didn’t meet all of our objectives, but we did gain valuable experience, plus even more valuable flight data. This launch sets us well on our way to reaching orbit within two additional flights, so we’re happy with the result.We are incredibly proud of what the team accomplished today. This was our first orbital launch attempt, and the first flight of a rocket designed from the ground-up for low cost mass production and highly-automated launch operations. The entire launch system was deployed by six people in less than a week – completely unprecedented.Astra’s strategy is to learn fast through iterative development. Although we’re pleased with today’s outcome, we still have more work to do to reach orbit. Once we reach orbit, we will relentlessly continue to improve the economics of the system as we deliver our customers’ payloads.Over the next several weeks, we’ll be taking a close look at the flight data to determine how to make the next flight more successful. Rocket 3.2 is already built and ready for another big step towards orbit. Thank you to our incredible team and their families, all of our supporters, and stay tuned for updates over the next few weeks. We’ll be back to the pad before you know it!Chris and Adam
Preliminary data review indicates the rocket performed very well. Early in the flight, our guidance system appears to have introduced some slight oscillation into the flight, causing the vehicle to drift from its planned trajectory leading to a commanded shutdown of the engines by the flight safety system.
Here's a much closer video of the flight, showing much better details of the flight, well worth a watch (if it did terminate then they'd better work on the self-destruct systems BTW)https://twitter.com/ThomasPRupp/status/1304686594411167745This twitter post links to a video on facebook which is here:https://www.facebook.com/ewvandongen/videos/10100980788269883/?extid=3k707T0fk6ZPlc1G&d=nI'm including both depending on your social media preference.
Did it....start flipping right after shutdown? Certainly seemed to be in a flat spin on the way down.
twitter.com/GeoffdBarrett/status/1304636125471019008Reportedly sourced from Facebook.
Apparently this was not an orbital attempt:twitter.com/planet4589/status/1304623025858453506QuoteFailed to reach orbit; failed during first stage burn. This was @Astra's first orbital launch attempt - better luck next time.https://twitter.com/wikkit/status/1304667330878865408QuoteI'm old fashioned and think that to call something an orbital attempt it would need to be capable of making orbit.
Quote from: FutureSpaceTourist on 09/12/2020 06:55 amApparently this was not an orbital attempt:twitter.com/planet4589/status/1304623025858453506QuoteFailed to reach orbit; failed during first stage burn. This was @Astra's first orbital launch attempt - better luck next time.https://twitter.com/wikkit/status/1304667330878865408QuoteI'm old fashioned and think that to call something an orbital attempt it would need to be capable of making orbit.The blog post specifically says it was an orbital launch attempt.
Not every rocket has explosive self-destruct.Several of the small rocket companies are simply going with thrust termination. I think Rocketlab does it too. Virgin Orbit does.And Astra is also using electric pumps on their engines. That should make reliable thrust termination quite easy.
Quote from: Bananas_on_Mars on 09/12/2020 10:43 amNot every rocket has explosive self-destruct.Several of the small rocket companies are simply going with thrust termination. I think Rocketlab does it too. Virgin Orbit does.And Astra is also using electric pumps on their engines. That should make reliable thrust termination quite easy. Coming down on water is one thing. There's going to be some serious unhappiness about bombing Kodiak.
Quote from: Nomadd on 09/12/2020 01:35 pmQuote from: Bananas_on_Mars on 09/12/2020 10:43 amNot every rocket has explosive self-destruct.Several of the small rocket companies are simply going with thrust termination. I think Rocketlab does it too. Virgin Orbit does.And Astra is also using electric pumps on their engines. That should make reliable thrust termination quite easy. Coming down on water is one thing. There's going to be some serious unhappiness about bombing Kodiak. But why? I can't understand them not implementing an FTS in the vehicle.
Pilot-induced oscillations, as defined by MIL-HDBK-1797A,[1] are sustained or uncontrollable oscillations resulting from efforts of the pilot to control the aircraft and occurs when the pilot of an aircraft inadvertently commands an often increasing series of corrections in opposite directions, each an attempt to cover the aircraft's reaction to the previous input with an over correction in the opposite direction. An aircraft in such a condition can appear to be "porpoising" switching between upward and downward directions. As such it is a coupling of the frequency of the pilot's inputs and the aircraft's own frequency. During flight test, pilot-induced oscillation is one of the handling qualities factors that is analyzed, with the aircraft being graded by an established scale (chart at right). In order to avoid any assumption that oscillation is necessarily the fault of the pilot, new terms have been suggested to replace pilot-induced oscillation. These include aircraft-pilot coupling, pilot–in-the-loop oscillations and pilot-assisted (or augmented) oscillations.[2]
