Astra Space Just Revealed Its New Rocket Engine
Astra space has had some trouble in terms of launching rockets and successfully reaching and delivering payloads to orbit. The company’s rocket 3 line in particular has been inconsistent and recently experienced multiple failed launch attempts. This among other reasons caused Astra to cancel the Rocket 3 line and move onto what they call Launch System 2.0
With a new rocket comes brand new engines. Just a few days ago the company gave an update that showcased a static fire of a new engine for Astra’s updated launch system. This rocket and its components are hoping to change the company’s track record for launches and begin providing consistent access to space for different customers.
In addition to this, Astra has been continuing to make more deals surrounding its spacecraft engines. While the company has had quite a bit of trouble over the past few years and especially in recent months, they are working hard to try and turn it around. Here I will go more in-depth into the new launch system engine testing, what happened to the Rocket 3 line, Astra’s plan going forward, and more.
New Rocket Engine
Not long ago Astra revealed its new launch system 2.0 meant to change how the company accesses space. Recently, we have been receiving more updates and details on the new rocket including tests of possible engines. Earlier this month on September 1st Astra Space tweeted saying, “Testing engines for our new launch system.” This tweet included a 25 second video of the engine hot fire. Here you could see the burn itself lasted around 23 seconds with it being shut off at the end. As of right now, there is not a lot we know regarding Launch System 2.0. The rocket was originally announced back in May and Astra has only hinted at some of its features and design. Specifically, Astra has said its Launch System 2.0 will focus on improving cadence, capacity, and cost, while increasing automation. Their design point is 300 kilograms of payload to low Earth orbit using a slightly larger rocket with more powerful engines. While they continue to focus on capacity, they are continuing to drive costs down. Astra’s base launch price will be $3.95 million. By continuing to offer what they hope to be the lowest price per launch, they are confident they will continue to attract customers.
What’s most interesting about this engine and the recent test fire has to do with some reports made back in September of last year. Here, a few different news agencies reported on a deal between Firefly Aerospace and Astra. Supposedly, Astra signed a roughly $30 million deal for the rights to manufacture Firefly’s Aerosapce’s Reaver engine which is used on the first stage of Alpha. They reported that within this deal which was closed earlier in 2021, Firefly would send 50 Reaver engines to Astra’s factory. From here, the company would make some changes and adjustments as they see fit. This means we could be seeing Reaver derived engines built by Astra. While none of this information is 100% confirmed or from one of the companies themselves, there are definitely some similarities between this engine and Reaver.
For one the engines look very similar. Firefly Aerospace has quite a bit of footage of the Reaver engine and they are not far off from this recent Astra test fire. The other similarity has to do with the sound. At the start of Astra’s static fire, you can hear a very unique engine start up sound that is similar to what you hear at the start of Firefly Aerospace’s first orbital test flight. These reasons among others is why many people are confident a deal was made between the two companies.
All of which comes back to Astra canceling the Rocket 3 line and moving on. Specifically, just a few months ago in June, the company launched a few different NASA satellites apart of the TROPICS 1 mission. Unfortunately, the rocket was unable to reach orbit and the satellites were lost. This failed attempt joined a host of others within the same rocket line. We still have yet to receive a detailed analysis of what exactly went wrong during that launch. Either way, these failures combined with a few additional reasons caused the company to give up on the Rocket 3 line and work towards Launch System 2.0. This leads into Astra’s plan going forward and how they are trying to turn around the company’s progress.
Astra’s Future Plan
Not long ago Astra revealed a three phase approach they plan to use to grow the company over time. It starts with Phase 1 which revolves around launch services. They highlight that they are primarily focused on dramatically increasing access to space. Astra points out that in order to get more to space economically, you can either scale up your rocket (and make a really big rocket), or design a rocket that is easy and inexpensive to produce, and scale out your factory to make many smaller rockets. Astra continues by saying while large reusable rockets are ideal for transporting people and large cargo to space, Astra’s customers tell them that the flexibility of getting to the right place in space as quickly as possible, at the lowest possible per-launch cost is what is important to them. This is why Astra has chosen to scale out its factory instead of scale up its rocket. They believe a thriving space economy requires both high volume small launch and human-rated large launch, and that the lowest cost leaders in each of these categories will be winners.
The next is Phase 2 which focuses on space technology. Here Astra highlights that paying $50,000 to $100,000 for a single space-qualified part that fits in the palm of your hand that would cost less than $500 if it was a consumer product is painful, particularly if you need four of them for a satellite. Having to wait 9 months to get these parts made to order makes rapid iteration impossible, and then having the items arrive six months late adds insult to injury. This is expected because few of these components are standard and most are essentially handmade by skilled craftspersons, followed by numerous tests and paperwork before delivery. Like rockets, core space technologies are not at scale today, but need to be. Therefore, in Phase 2, Astra plans to develop the most critical core space technologies, including electric propulsion and solar power, that will be incorporated into its newer rockets, satellites and other space infrastructure to ultimately deliver space services.
Finally, you have Phase 3 encompassing space services. In Phase 3, the company plans to vertically integrate Astra’s core space technologies into satellites that will form an Astra constellation. They are laying the foundation for their space platform by securing licenses for spectrum, developing core space technologies, and securing anchor customers for Astra services. Astra’s strategy is to allow its customers to deploy software on a single mega-constellation that is being constantly refreshed with new technology. All of which are meant to help Astra grow and become a more significant company within the space industry.
Recently we have seen a lot more work and updates regarding the company’s spacecraft engine. Specifically, the Astra Spacecraft Engine (ASE) & Astra Spacecraft Engine Max (ASE Max) can be configured with multiple thrusters and PPUs to handle a wide range of missions, from the smallest earth observation satellites up to large communications satellites with multiple kilowatts of solar power. Each system is delivered fully integrated and tested to reduce spacecraft development complexity, while improving on orbit reliability. Just about a week ago, the company tweeted saying, “Astra has been selected by Airbus OneWeb Satellites to design and build spacecraft engines. The Astra Spacecraft Engine will be integrated into the portfolio of AOS Arrow commercial small satellites.”
This recent announcement comes in addition to many others we have seen in just the past few months alone regarding the spacecraft engine. It’s clear that Astra is partially shifting its focus and trying to diversify what they offer within the industry. Taking a closer look at the engine, ASE is a fully-integrated electric propulsion system that consists of a Hall-effect thruster, a pneumatic feed system, radiation-hardened electronics, and a composite over-wrapped pressure vessel (COPV) tank that can be shipped to a launch site fully fueled. Astra handles all aspects of design, integration, and testing for shipping and launching a propulsion system. The system uses the same space-qualified components for each customer to meet each customer’s specific mission requirements. Each module can be configured with multiple thrusters if desired and various tank sizes to support a broad range of missions including low Earth orbit raising, medium Earth orbit raising, geostationary orbit raising, station keeping, cis-lunar transfers, and de-orbiting. Each feature works to improve what Astra Space has to offer.
Conclusion
Astra Space has been working through quite a few complications in the last few months alone. After another failed launch the company canceled its Rocket 3 line and moved on to Launch System 2.0. Just days ago they released static fire footage of engine testing for the new launch vehicle. We will have to wait and see how it progresses and the impact it has on the space industry.