Astra LV0007 - STP-27AD2 - Kodiak - 20 November 2021 (0616 UTC)

[Galactic Penguin SST]

49494/2021-108A now tracked in 438 x 507 km x 86.0 deg. orbit.

[edzieba]

In the terminal count, there was an interesting callout from the LD to the FSO, advising them to prepare to issue an 'option command' at T+164 (2m 44s into flight) calling out "an event". Going by the timeline that's just prior to MECO. AFTS is not armed and instead in shadow mode (FSO would not be inhibiting an on-board system, the FTS is fired by ground command) so something to listen out for on the next attempt.

Well, that turned out to be an opaque 'option enabled' callout.

[Star One]

NSF’s archived launch coverage on YT:

[Robotical]

Welcome to the orbital club, Atra! The US now has six orbital launch providers!

[zubenelgenubi]

Before the hold I heard them say 6:04:00, so I imagine it was on the dot at 6:16:00.

Launch 06:16:00 UTC

https://twitter.com/planet4589/status/1461941408475013120

[cpushack]

Congratulations Astra!!

A new small satellite launcher has made orbit. And it’s supposed to be capable of responsive launch from multiple sites on short notice. I could see the DoD making use of this.

~6 person setup/on-site launch team and everything containerized really helps for making that possible too

I think they said their „Red Team“ on site is only 4 people. And they transported the team, the rocket and the ground equipment all on the same C-17.

It is indeed a 6 person team, but it was neat that they could transport all on a C-17, including that team

[RotoSequence]

Welcome to the orbital club, Atra! The US now has six orbital launch providers!

•Astra
•SpaceX
•ULA
•Virgin Orbit
•Northrop Grumman
•Rocket Labs

Is that all of them?

[lrk]

Can someone explain the meaning of the "ignitor sequences" that had to be manually loaded during the terminal countdown? 

[trimeta]

Congratulations Astra!!

A new small satellite launcher has made orbit. And it’s supposed to be capable of responsive launch from multiple sites on short notice. I could see the DoD making use of this.

~6 person setup/on-site launch team and everything containerized really helps for making that possible too

I think they said their „Red Team“ on site is only 4 people. And they transported the team, the rocket and the ground equipment all on the same C-17.

It is indeed a 6 person team, but it was neat that they could transport all on a C-17, including that team

Somehow I thought I heard seven? Red lead, four engineers, one IT person, one safety person. Obviously, that doesn't change the "capable of transporting on a single C-17" calculus.

[EnigmaSCADA]

Can someone explain the meaning of the "ignitor sequences" that had to be manually loaded during the terminal countdown?

I'm interested in this also. Anyone?

Sent from my Pixel 5 using Tapatalk

[Scintillant]

Congratulations Astra!!

A new small satellite launcher has made orbit. And it’s supposed to be capable of responsive launch from multiple sites on short notice. I could see the DoD making use of this.

~6 person setup/on-site launch team and everything containerized really helps for making that possible too

I think they said their „Red Team“ on site is only 4 people. And they transported the team, the rocket and the ground equipment all on the same C-17.

It is indeed a 6 person team, but it was neat that they could transport all on a C-17, including that team

Somehow I thought I heard seven? Red lead, four engineers, one IT person, one safety person. Obviously, that doesn't change the "capable of transporting on a single C-17" calculus.

If you're thinking of the RSO, they're range-side so not technically part of the Astra team.

[trimeta]

If you're thinking of the RSO, they're range-side so not technically part of the Astra team.

I went back to the livestream (at around 48:43 in the video), and here's an index of everyone listed as being on the Red Team, along with roles:

Red Lead:
Adam Fritsch

Pad Technicians:
Hill Hudson
Robert Freeman
Eric Larsen
Sam Heershap(?) (I couldn't find this person on LinkedIn to verify the spelling of their last name)

Red Wire (IT):
Eric Steinberg

Safety Lead:
Ryan Hirschfield

It didn't sound like Ryan is also the RSO (Ryan's role was described as "responsible for the safety of overall launch operation events, including personnel compliance with our safety policies and procedures"), but I could be wrong about that.

[Jim]

That would be pad safety vs RSO

[FlattestEarth]

49494/2021-108A now tracked in 438 x 507 km x 86.0 deg. orbit.

Any info on deorbit burn and lower perigee?

[cpushack]

49494/2021-108A now tracked in 438 x 507 km x 86.0 deg. orbit.

Any info on deorbit burn and lower perigee?

Pretty sure the pressure fed Aether engine on the second stage has no restart capability so it will have to demise naturally

[FlattestEarth]

49494/2021-108A now tracked in 438 x 507 km x 86.0 deg. orbit.

Any info on deorbit burn and lower perigee?

Pretty sure the pressure fed Aether engine on the second stage has no restart capability so it will have to demise naturally

From the webcast:

the upper stage will

once it reaches orbit will

be deorbited and burn up in the

atmosphere so we do

consider it very important to be

responsible stewards of space we do not

want to leave any space debris up there

So if there is only natural decay that is misleading

[thirtyone]

Yeah, very curious about deorbit. I heard some pretty sketchy answers on stream which I had trouble believing. I kind of doubt any early space startup has the bandwidth to spend time/mass on developing restart on a S2 this small when they just barely made it to orbit

[thirtyone]

So if there is only natural decay that is misleading

Agreed. Also a bit upset that the orbit was so high, especially if there is no restart (which I strongly suspect will be the case). Couldn't they show that it could get to orbit but not stay in orbit by going into a highly elliptical orbit which could deorbit much sooner? Or is that difficult from a performance perspective?

[brussell]

The US has restart capability. Being pressure fed doesn't change that. They need it for reaching or circularizing high orbits anyway. They went for direct insertion this time to reduce risk.

The gossip is that they did insert in 500km circular orbit and the 438 perigee was due to a deliberate second burn. It's not clear to me why it was not a full deorbit burn. I haven't heard if that was also deliberate or an incomplete burn. It'd be nice if they said something about that publicly because that 438 just doesn't sound nice.

[OneSpeed]

Here is a plot of the LV-0007 mission telemetry.

The webcast provided data updates once every three seconds, so the acceleration has a rather stepped appearance compared to webcasts with more frequent updates.