Astra's NASA mission suffers failure, loss of weather satellites

Rocket firm Astra Space's mission to send tiny weather-monitoring NASA satellites to orbit on Sunday failed after a second-stage booster engine shut down early in space, according to the company's livestream of the mission. The failure occurred roughly 10 minutes after a successful liftoff of Astra's Rocket 3.3 from a launchpad at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

Rocket firm Astra Space's mission to send tiny weather-monitoring NASA satellites to orbit on Sunday failed after a second-stage booster engine shut down early in space, according to the company's livestream of the mission.

The failure occurred roughly 10 minutes after a successful liftoff of Astra's Rocket 3.3 from a launchpad at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. "We had a nominal first-stage flight. However, the upper-stage engine did shutdown early and we did not deliver our payloads to orbit," said Astra's livestream commentator Amanda Durk Frye.