Move Over, SpaceX: A New Rocket Maker Is in Town
A look at Astra, a company shaking the rocket industry
In April of 2018, the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) announced the creation of the “DARPA Launch Challenge,” a competition designed to “demonstrate the ability to rapidly launch small satellites.” Any company could apply to compete for the $10 million cash prize.
The catch? Companies had to be “able to perform two launches of small satellites, from two different sites, on short notice.”
The challenge sounds easy. But, as the past two years have shown, the technical and regulatory details have made the project anything but simple for competing companies.
One year after announcing the creation of the competition, DARPA narrowed the finalists down to a group of three companies. As the agency explained through its website, “The qualifying competitors are Vector Launch; Virgin Orbit…and a third company, which has requested anonymity for the first few months of the Challenge.”
By early 2020, the three companies would have to demonstrate their ability to quickly launch small rockets. But things didn’t quite go as planned:
Virgin Orbit dropped out of the competition in October of 2019.
