On February 10, at 20:00 UTC, an Astra Rocket 3.3 launched the ELaNA 41 mission from SLC-46 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. This was the second attempt to launch this mission, after a scrub at T-0 earlier in the week.

This attempt proceeded smoothly up through liftoff. The rocket lifted off and headed over the Atlantic Ocean. The first-stage burn was nominal, but the fairings did not separate properly, trapping the second stage in the rocket. It broke free after ignition but picked up a spin as a result. The second stage did not recover, so the mission was lost.

On an interesting note for the current age of commercial spaceflight, Astra is a publicly-traded company. As soon as the webcast showed the second stage malfunction, their stock price dropped significantly, to the point where trading was stopped for five minutes. Once trading resumed, it dropped even more until the market closed for the day. In total, it lost 26% of its value. 

Needless to say, this is a big blow for Astra, who has had a single successful launch out of eight attempts. It’s also a blow for NASA, which contracted the launch through the Venture Class Launch System. The four payloads were from The University of Alabama, University of New Hampshire, University of California Berkeley, and NASA’s Johnson Space Center.

More Information

We Have Liftoff! ELaNa 41 Mission Rockets to Space (NASA)

ELaNa 41 Mission Update (NASA)

ELaNa 41 mission page (NASA)