Ad Astra to Astra 3.1 — their first orbital launch attempt

Kudos to Kemp & the Kodiak Team for a glorious up-goer tonight! This was Astra’s maiden flight of their first orbital rocket, built in Alameda, CA.

She had a spiral oscillation coming off the pad, and at approx T+30 seconds, they cut the booster engines as she was off trajectory… It then coasted upward and bore a certain resemblance to the first Falcon 1 flight, crashing back to Earth. Hoping they learn form the data steam and beautiful images from launch.

News in Spaceflight Now.

“Rockets are hard”, Elon tweeted. And here’s a local video of the bada 💥