This morning (Eastern time) Astra's next attempt at making orbit with their Rocket 3.3 lifted off from their launch facility on Kodiak Island, Alaska. This launch succeeded and marks the first time the company has achieved orbit joining the ranks of the small sat launchers who have done so.
The Bay Area startup's 43-foot-tall (13 meters) Launch Vehicle 0007 (LV0007) lifted off from the Pacific Spaceport Complex on Alaska's Kodiak Island on Saturday (Nov. 20) at 1:16 a.m. EST (0616 GMT), carrying a dummy payload on a test flight for the U.S. military.
Just nine minutes later, LV0007's upper stage slipped into orbit about 310 miles (500 kilometers) above Earth, notching a huge milestone for Astra.
Regular spaceflight observers know that the reason most launch sites are considerably farther south than Kodiak Island's 57 degrees north latitude is that launching from lower latitudes gets a stronger assist from the Earth's rotational velocity. That rotation literally throws the rocket in the desired direction and the closer to the equator the faster the throw. Astra doesn't intend to operate only from Kodiak Island. On the other hand, no particular place is listed as a future base of operations, just saying, "a variety of locations around the world."
Astra already has signed up paying customers, including Planet, the company that operates the world's largest network of Earth-observing satellites (and has flown on SpaceX ride sharing missions). Plus (surprisingly) Astra recently filed an application with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to assemble a constellation of 13,600 internet-beaming satellites. The Space.com article concludes:
We should expect more spaceflight action over the coming weeks and months from Astra, which hopes to ramp up to a nearly daily launch cadence by 2025.
Welcome to the orbital club, Astra!
If the satellite was going into a polar orbit higher latitudes make for an easier launch, less energy required for a plane change once it is up. There are lots of earth-observer satellites in that orbit because it allows overhead passes at the same sun angle each orbit.
ReplyDeleteClearly. Unfortunately, I could find no mention of the absolutely important aspect of what orbit it went into. Maybe because it's a weekend?
DeleteMy only clue is that on a previous launch that didn't make orbit, the company said if they were launching from down here they would have gotten enough extra velocity to have achieved orbit. Which, of course, implies it wasn't a polar orbit.