Astra Rocket 3.3 TROPICS launch
Astra’s Rocket 3.3 lifts off from Cape Canaveral June 12 carrying two NASA TROPICS cubesats. The launch failed, though, when the upper stage shut down prematurely.

Astra Space announced Aug. 4 it is canceling its existing small launch vehicle after its most recent failure and will focus instead on a much larger vehicle that may not be ready to fly customers until 2024.

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Jeff Foust has more than a decade of experience writing about space policy, entrepreneurial ventures and regulatory affairs. In 2001, he established spacetoday.net to aggregate and summarize the day's space-related news stories. In 2003, he started The...