{"id":57965,"date":"2021-03-04T17:46:46","date_gmt":"2021-03-04T09:46:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/astra-wins-8m-nasa-launch-contract\/"},"modified":"2021-03-04T17:46:46","modified_gmt":"2021-03-04T09:46:46","slug":"astra-wins-8m-nasa-launch-contract","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/astra-wins-8m-nasa-launch-contract\/","title":{"rendered":"Astra Wins $8M NASA Launch Contract"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n<p><strong>Astra<\/strong> has won a $7.95 million launch contract with <strong>NASA<\/strong> to launch a constellation of six cubesats for storm research over three launches. NASA announced the firm fixed-price contract on Feb. 26.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Called TROPICS \u2014 the Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation Structure and Storm Intensity with a Constellation of SmallSats mission \u2014 is set to launch on the company\u2019s Rocket 3 between Jan. 8 and July 31, 2022. It will launch from Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean with three separate launches over a 120-day period.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNASA\u2019s selection of high-cadence launches that directly insert the satellites into the right orbits validates Astra\u2019s approach,\u201d said Adam London, Founder and CTO of Astra. \u201cLarger rockets are too expensive for dedicated small satellite missions and orbital transfer vehicles take too long to get to the right orbit \u2013 we believe dedicated, direct insertion will be an increasingly preferred way to deploy satellite constellations.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Astra is among the spree of space start-ups to announce plans to go public through a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC). Astra is building a mass-produced portable smallsat launch system that can go from payload delivery to launch within days, and the company hit the milestone of reaching space for the first time in December 2020. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Astra has won a $7.95 million launch contract with NASA to launch a constellation of six cubesats for storm research over three launches. NASA announced the firm fixed-price contract on Feb. 26.&nbsp; Called TROPICS \u2014 the Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation Structure and Storm Intensity with a Constellation of SmallSats mission \u2014 is set to launch [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":51672,"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":[],"class_list":["post-57965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57965"}],"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=57965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57965\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}