Astra came tantalizingly close today (Feb. 7) to its first-ever launch of functional satellites.The California businesss Launch Vehicle 0008 (LV0008) was scheduled to introduce the ELaNa 41 mission for NASA today from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. And it nearly happened: LV0008s first-stage engines fired up at 1:50 p.m. EST (1850 GMT) as planned, but the rocket shut the liftoff effort down nearly right away thereafter.After evaluating the issue, Astra chose not to try another launch throughout todays window, which went through 4 p.m. EST (2100 GMT). Video: Watch Astras Rocket 3.2 launch on its 1st successful flightAstras Launch Vehicle 0008 fires its first-stage engines during an attempt to launch the ELaNa 41 mission for NASA on Feb. 7, 2022. The attempt was aborted practically immediately after engine ignition. (Image credit: Astra/NASASpaceflight. com)” Unfortunately, the abort that was around our T-0 time was a small telemetry issue that the team requires to work to resolve,” Carolina Grossman, Astras director of item management, stated during a webcast of todays shot. “So unfortunately we require to stand down from todays launch effort.” Astra has not yet announced a new launch date. Whenever ElaNa 41 gets off the ground, you can enjoy it live here at Space.com, courtesy of Astra and its livestream partner NASASpaceflight.com, or straight by means of the company.Astra has carried out four orbital launches to date, all of them test missions from the Pacific Spaceport Complex in Alaska. The company reached space on 2 of those flights, and its LV0007 made it to orbit on the most recent objective, a trial for the U.S. armed force that launched in November.None of those test missions carried functional payloads. The 43-foot-tall (13 meters) LV0008, by contrast, will deliver four small cubesats to orbit on ELaNa 41, if all goes according to strategy. Those little satellites are flying through NASAs Educational Launch of Nanosatellites (ELaNa) initiative. They were built by teams at NASAs Johnson Space Center in Houston and three various universities (the University of Alabama, New Mexico State University and the University of California, Berkeley). You can find out more about all four of them here.Todays scrub was the 2nd for the ELaNa 41 objective. It was initially supposed to introduce on Saturday (Feb. 5), however that effort was scuttled by a concern with the radar system at the launch variety. Mike Wall is the author of “Out There” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; shown by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or on Facebook..
Astra came tantalizingly close today (Feb. 7) to its first-ever launch of operational satellites.The California companys Launch Vehicle 0008 (LV0008) was arranged to introduce the ELaNa 41 objective for NASA today from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. And it almost happened: LV0008s first-stage engines fired up at 1:50 p.m. EST (1850 GMT) as planned, however the rocket shut the liftoff effort down practically immediately thereafter.After evaluating the issue, Astra decided not to attempt another launch during todays window, which ran through 4 p.m. EST (2100 GMT). Video: Watch Astras Rocket 3.2 launch on its 1st successful flightAstras Launch Vehicle 0008 fires its first-stage engines during an attempt to launch the ELaNa 41 mission for NASA on Feb. 7, 2022.