Video Shows Astra Rocket Tumbling Out of Control After Launch Failure

Astra's Rocket 3.3 failed to carry the NASA mini-satellites of the ELaNa 41 mission to orbiton on Thursday when it seemed to spin out of control shortly after launch.

The failure followed what appeared initially to be a successful launch from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 3 p.m. ET and the separation of the first and second stages of Astra's launch vehicle LV0008 was met by cheers from a gathered crowd. Minutes later elation turned to disappointment when the upper stage of the rocket tumbled wildly out of control.

A video of the launch shows the moment of separation when the rocket reached an altitude of around 85 miles above the Earth, approximately three minutes after launch. After separation occurs the upper stage's boosters ignite which should smoothly carry it to its destination, an orbit around 310 miles above Earth.

Instead, the onboard camera shows the moment that the rocket appears to tumble out of control, showing views of Earth and space whipping past the rocket. The tracking readout in the right-hand bottom corner of the screen shows the upper stage was traveling at around 9,000 miles per hour when it fell out of control. Video contact with the upper stage was lost seconds later.

Chris Kemp, the founder and chairman of Astra, addressed the failed launch on Twitter, writing: "We experienced an issue in today's flight. I'm deeply sorry we were not able to deliver our customer's payloads. I'm with the team looking at data, and we will provide more info as soon as we can."

As a result of the failed launch, four small satellites known as "CubeSats" funded by NASA with the mission designation have been lost. The CubeSats would have delivered scientific data to the University of California, Berkeley, the University of New Mexico, the University of Alabama, and NASA's Johnson Space Center.

This was the first time that Astra has conducted a NASA mission and the first time it had launched a rocket from Cape Canaveral.

Newsweek previously reported that the launch had been delayed two previous times following four orbital test launches which lifted off from the Pacific Spaceport Complex in Alaska, Space.com reported. Astra managed to reach space in two of these four test launches, with its LV0007 rocket making it to orbit in a test mission for the U.S. military in November 2021.

While a setback for the research institutions that lost CubeSats, The New York Times predicts that the failure could be a more significant setback for Astra, a rocket launch start-up founded in 2016. The launch was an attempt by Astra to join more-established operators in the space industry like SpaceX and Virgin Orbit.

Following the mission failure, stocks in Astra also tumbled out of control with trading of shares halted just minutes after the launch. Preceding the freeze on trading the stocks had fallen by five percent, Space News reported. When trading resumed shares continued to fall, closing at a loss of 26 percent.

Following a failed test in August 2021, Kemp showed his and Astra's resolve in pursuing the space business despite setbacks. Kemp wrote: "Space may be hard, but like this rocket, we are not giving up."