Astra changes strategy and ditches current rocket in the wake of launch debacles

The company will no longer use its current lightweight vehicle, Rocket 3, but will instead use a larger rocket that is still under development.

It's a big change for the company, which has operated on the hunch that customers are willing to risk a certain number of rocket failures. A lot of people have the expectation that every launch needs to be perfect, according to Kemp. I think we have to have a lot of launches in order to get people to think about it.

It appears that people are thinking about it. After the failure of the TROPICS 1 mission in June, this is even more true. The company and Kemp anticipated that the launch would end in a loss of payload after the upper stage malfunctioned.

Kemp told investors that if two out of the threeTROPICS launches are successful, it is not mission failure. The constellation has a lower refresh rate.

There is a change in strategy that suggests a larger change in tune. The increased capacity of Rocket 4 is a huge change from the 50 kilogram capacity of Rocket 3.

The shift to investors was explained by Kemp. After two out of the four flights that we had flown were not successful, the opportunity to fly on a vehicle that has received all of the attention and energy from our team over the past year was favorable to them. The company has seen increased demand from large constellation operators for higher capacity.

There will be no more flights in 2022. Kemp didn't say when the test flights would take place, but he did say that commercial operations would depend on the success of the tests.

The space products division of the company grew beyond these changes. The company will open a 60,000 square foot production facility to support the manufacture of that product after securing 103 committed orders for that engine. The majority of the company's revenue is expected to come from the sale of spaceship engines.

The $100 million committed equity facility with B. Riley Principal Capital II was announced on the same day as the change in strategy. The company has a $200 million runway on hand.