{"id":45985,"date":"2023-08-16T17:04:47","date_gmt":"2023-08-16T09:04:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/astras-new-rocket-wont-launch-until-2024-if-it-ever-flies\/"},"modified":"2023-08-16T17:04:47","modified_gmt":"2023-08-16T09:04:47","slug":"astras-new-rocket-wont-launch-until-2024-if-it-ever-flies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/astras-new-rocket-wont-launch-until-2024-if-it-ever-flies\/","title":{"rendered":"Astra\u2019s new rocket won\u2019t launch until 2024\u2014if it ever flies"},"content":{"rendered":"

11:20 a.m. EDT Wednesday update: <\/strong>Adding Astra\u2019s plan to grow Rocket 4\u2019s payload capacity to more than 1,000 kilograms.<\/p>\n

Astra is running out of money.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a year since Astra shelved its first orbital-class rocket after just two successful launches in seven flights. Chris Kemp, Astra\u2019s founder and CEO, last year unveiled a new rocket design he said would be more reliable and capable of carrying heavier cargo into orbit.<\/p>\n

A year later, the development of Astra\u2019s new launch vehicle\u2014named Rocket 4\u2014appears to have slowed to a crawl. Astra has outfitted a new production line for Rocket 4 at the company\u2019s headquarters in Alameda, California, but the company doesn\u2019t have enough money to move forward on the program as quickly as it would like.<\/p>\n

Rocket 4 won\u2019t be ready for its first test flights until next year, Kemp said Monday in a quarterly earnings call. When Rocket 4 might be ready for revenue-earning commercial launches is even less clear, hinging on the results of the test flights, he said.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s a fair question whether Astra will ever launch Rocket 4.<\/p>\n

In its first iteration, Astra\u2019s new launch vehicle will be able to haul up to 770 pounds (350 kilograms) of payload mass into a polar Sun-synchronous orbit, a destination favored by a significant slice of the small satellite market. The company has plans to grow the payload capacity to more than a metric ton, but Astra\u2019s rocket program is continuing to focus on dedicated small launches as other providers, like Rocket Lab, Relativity, and Firefly, are pivoting to larger vehicles in pursuit of more lucrative launch contracts. Virgin Orbit, which had an air-launch system with no path to grow for larger payloads, went out of business earlier this year.<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

Questions about the market for Rocket 4 aside, Astra is struggling to find the money to fund its development.<\/p>\n

On August 4, exactly one year after announcing it would retire its first rocket design, Astra signaled that the new Rocket 4 program could be in trouble. The company said it reduced its overall workforce by about 25 percent, primarily in its launch, sales, and administrative divisions. In addition to the staff reduction, Astra says it has shifted around 50 employees from its launch services department to work on the company\u2019s electric propulsion systems used by on-orbit satellites.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

An Astra spacecraft engine firing inside a ground test chamber.<\/p>\n

Credit:
\n Astra<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

After years in stealth mode, the startup opened its doors to the media in 2020 and became a public company in 2021.<\/p>\n

Last month, Astra announced a stock sale in an attempt to raise up to $65 million, along with a reverse stock split\u2014an apparent effort to boost its struggling stock price and keep its Nasdaq listing. Astra also said it received $10.8 million from a debt sale to an investment firm.<\/p>\n

All of these efforts suggest Astra is in a fight for survival, and if the company does pull through, it may not be as a small satellite launch provider.<\/p>\n

Short on cash<\/h2>\n

Kemp, Astra\u2019s chief executive, said these \u201cdifficult decisions\u201d were \u201cnecessary to support a sustainable plan for Astra going forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

As of the end of June, Astra reported $26.3 million of cash, cash equivalents, or marketable securities on its balance sheet, less than the company projected in its previous quarterly report. Astra forecasts that figure to fall to between $15 million and $20 million by the end of September. The company\u2019s net loss for the second quarter of this year was $14 million.<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

Despite the cost-cutting, layoffs, and plans for a stock sale, Astra said in its quarterly filing with the SEC that it still has \u201climited cash resources.\u201d The company said it will need additional capital to fund commercial-scale production. If Astra obtains \u201csignificant additional financing\u201d and continues to limit capital expenditures, the company\u2019s management wrote that it expects to be able to continue operating for at least the next 12 months.<\/p>\n

But those are big ifs, particularly the question of securing additional financing. Astra didn\u2019t address how long it might stay in business without a cash infusion. One investment analyst on the earnings call Monday suggested Astra might not make it to the end of the year at its current cash burn rate, but Astra\u2019s chief financial officer said the company\u2019s rate of cash expenses would decline for the rest of 2023.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re reducing our expenses as much as we possibly can,\u201d Kemp said. \u201cBut not so much that we\u2019re unable to deliver for our customers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Astra\u2019s spacecraft engines division produces electric thrusters for small satellites, building on engineering work started by a company called Apollo Fusion, which Astra acquired in 2021. The company said it recently shipped the first four spacecraft engines from a new Bay Area factory, although each miniature engine requires up to a year more work to fully integrate them into customers\u2019 satellites.<\/p>\n

The spacecraft engine business provides Astra with its most assured near-term revenue stream, with a backlog of nearly 300 committed engine orders. Astra\u2019s customers in this area include Airbus OneWeb Satellites, LeoStella, Loft Orbital, and Spaceflight.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Chris Kemp, founder and chief executive officer of Astra, right, during South By Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, in 2022.<\/p>\n

Credit:
\n Matthew Busch\/Bloomberg via Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

Kemp said Astra\u2019s work over the last few weeks has bought the company time to search for strategic investors.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are actively focused on finding investors in these two businesses that we\u2019re increasingly finding are distinct and at different phases of their development,\u201d Kemp said. \u201cWe have a very compelling business if you\u2019re a satellite operator and you need spacecraft engines, or if you are a satellite operator, and you\u2019re looking for the kind of economics that you can only see with large rockets, but with much more dedicated launch services.\u201d<\/p>\n

Astra hasn\u2019t given up on Rocket 4. It has launch contracts for Rocket 4 with the US Space Force and the military\u2019s Defense Innovation Unit. Kemp said the Space Force is \u201cholding us accountable to the highest standards.\u201d Astra\u2019s launch contract for a single Rocket 4 mission with the Space Force was valued at $11.5 million.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, Astra regularly shared updates on Rocket 4 testing, including the manufacturing of a test tank and engine hot-fire testing. But the flow of updates on Rocket 4 hardware and software testing has slowed in recent months.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of the expensive hardware (for Rocket 4) is already here, so the team is, frankly, just spending a lot of time integrating and testing components such as the engines, the valves, some of the electronics, and doing a lot of integrated system level simulation testing to test the overall software stack,\u201d Kemp said Monday.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can look forward to us continuing to share the results of those tests as they\u2019re completed.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

11:20 a.m. EDT Wednesday update: Adding Astra\u2019s plan to grow Rocket 4\u2019s payload capacity to more than 1,000 kilograms. Astra is running out of money. It\u2019s been a year since Astra shelved its first orbital-class rocket after just two successful launches in seven flights. Chris Kemp, Astra\u2019s founder and CEO, last year unveiled a new rocket […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45986,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1941,8676,9783],"class_list":["post-45985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-astra","tag-rocket-4","tag-smallsat-launch"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45985"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45985\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}