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Thanks for the technical analysis. I think you did an excellent job explaining support, resistance and risk. I will be a long term holder of this stock, so I don't use options on ASTR but others may not only appreciate the work but act on your analysis after they do their own DD. If there's a problem with the first Canaveral launch I'll add on Monday. This is a long road and will continue to be a very competitive market. I like ASTR's unique approach. Hoping for the best on Saturday.
Like I said when it was above 7.00 plus Short it shares will be hitting the mkt. We did cover our short in the low 4.00 level. Have a great day.........
ALAMEDA, Calif. --(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Astra Space, Inc. (“Astra”) (Nasdaq: ASTR), today announced the award of the Venture-Class Acquisition of Dedicated and Rideshare (VADR) Launch Services Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for future task orders, which have not yet been issued. This contract has a five-year ordering period with a maximum total value of $300 million and will be managed by the Launch Services Program at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida . This new contract is in addition to the four launches NASA has already contracted with Astra for delivery this year. VADR allows for the rapid acquisition of launch services to meet mission requirements for scientific and research payloads, enabling launch to any orbit within 12-24 months from task order award. Astra’s launch system offers affordable dedicated access to space aimed at serving customers like NASA to support their science and technology needs.
ASTR still waiting for FAA launch license. Link to Saturday's video below.
Full video from Saturday’s successful static fire for @NASA’s ELaNa 41 mission. Looking forward to announcing the launch date when we receive our FAA launch license.
An Astra Space Rocket 3 rocket will launch the VCLS Demo-2 mission on Sunday, January 23, 2022 at 1:00 PM (UTC). Check back here to watch the live coverage (if available).
Note from Chris Kemp on Twitter yesterday evening.
Preparations are underway for @Astra’s first launch out of Cape Canaveral and first orbital payload delivery for @NASA! We will announce launch date/time once we receive our launch license from the FAA and complete static fire.
It's unlikely there will be a "flood" of shares hitting the market. Most will go to long term shareholders like me who also held warrants. Also, while the timing may have been a surprise to some it's good timing for the company to convert warrants. You're welcome to short in January, it may simply create opportunity for those of us who like to buy at a discount.
lol Im on the beach and I see this text from one of my interns looking to make us money on the Jan effect. Hes showing me why he thinks ASTR is not a buy but a major short. Its off the list for the JAN effect and on the short list being that there will be a flood of shares hitting the mkt. I would think any one rookie in the mkt could see this. "As a courtesy, the Company would like to remind any remaining holders of Redeemable Warrants that if the remaining approximately 11.3 million Redeemable Warrants are not exercised prior to the Redemption Date, they will be redeemed at the redemption price of $0.10 per Redeemable Warrant.
Big news for ASTR. Launching a satellite from Cape Canaveral for NASA. First time in the big leagues, congrats!
Astra Space, Inc. (“Astra”) (Nasdaq: ASTR) today announced that it plans to deploy its first satellite in orbit for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in January 2022.
Peter Beck, Rocket Lab CEO:" Not reusing rockets is a dead-end product"
Sounds like the rocket lab CEO is afraid of something.
My guess is Rocket lab can't afford to have disposable rockets because they put so much money into making them. Even the retrieval cost money.
"Rocket Lab’s approach to recovering its Electron booster is to guide it back through the atmosphere and deploy a parachute. The company would then use a helicopter to snag the parachute above the ocean and carry the booster back to land."
Well that's sounds easy. Must be a heck of a helicopter. Helicopters and helicopter fuel are not cheap.
I think NASA scrapped this idea in the 60s. JK
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. I like ASTRA's plan better. Thats why I am here.
Agree with all of your post. ASTR will live or die on their ability to profitably launch low cost rockets/payloads into orbit. As difficult as that may be initially and technically, conceptually this is a very simple business.
It's green right now, why is it going red today (it may, I just can't project the close at this point) and why is it a POS? Please share.
Maybe some ASTR traders were on the wrong side of the trade with last launch and disappointed in the level of pps that occurred, but ASTR is still in play for the next launch and the one after that and after that, etc. In my opinion, this level around $10 is a good place for long and the next short trade. In my experience, scientist and engineers are not the type for stock scamming and really work hard and have extreme focus on their projects succeeding. I don't believe the ones at ASTR are any different.
Closing price of ASTR before successful launch was $9.53 (it hasn't got back down to that low yet). Price now is $10.36 an increase of over 8% in a few trading days. Why is it a "POS turd and f'ing scam"?
Wow!!! This POS turd is now worth less than before their successful launch, what a f’ing scam
Yeah, todays price doesnt mean much to me. This is easily the longest timeline of an investment in my portfolio. This is a hold for life and my retirement.
So that must apply to AMZN, AAPL, GOOGL, MSFT, etc., which are all down today. It's helpful to understand what the market is doing and general economic forces that work especially hard against tech companies - even more so against start-ups.
All growth companies are valued on their future earnings potential not their current earnings or lack thereof. When inflation concerns are rising and the 10 year treasury bond is rising it puts a damper on all of these companies.
ASTR is a long term hold for me but I've noticed that smart traders are doing well moving in and out as news becomes too positive or too negative. I think both approaches will work well in the long term but whining is not an investment strategy.
Astra reaches orbit for first time, clearing way for commercial launches
November 22, 2021 Stephen Clark
Astra launched its first rocket into orbit from Alaska early Saturday after falling short on three previous tries, an achievement company officials said will unlock “tremendous demand” for its small satellite launch service.
Company officials did not disclose a scheduled for its next mission in a virtual briefing with reporters Monday. But a NASA official said Astra’s next mission will carry six small CubeSat payloads into orbit for the space agency, and could take off before the end of the year.
Astra’s rocket, designated Rocket 3.3 or LV0007, launched from the Pacific Spaceport Complex on Kodiak Island, Alaska, at 1:16 a.m. EST (0616 GMT) Saturday. Heading south from Kodiak, the 43-foot-tall (13.1-meter), 4.3-foot-wide (1.3-meter) rocket soared high above the Pacific Ocean, then arced downrange to gain speed on the way to orbit.
Liftoff occurred at 9:16 p.m. local time in Alaska, where a lean crew of five Astra engineers and technicians readied the rocket for liftoff in recent weeks.
Five kerosene-fueled Delphin engines, combining to generate 32,500 pounds of sea level thrust, powered the launcher in the first 2 minutes, 50 seconds, of the mission. The first stage jettisoned a few seconds later, followed by separation of the payload shroud on top of the rocket.
A single Aether engine ignited on the second stage to accelerate the rocket to orbital velocity, reaching a speed of more than 17,000 mph (7.61 kilometers per second) at cutoff nearly nine minutes after liftoff.
The test flight delivered a non-separating payload to orbit for the U.S. Space Force, which named the mission STP-27AD2. The Space Force considered the launch a demonstration mission to evaluate Astra’s launch capabilities for future military satellites.
Military tracking data showed the rocket reached an orbit between 272 miles and 315 miles (438-by-507 kilometers) in altitude, with an inclination angle of 86 degrees to the equator.
Benjamin Lyon, Astra’s chief engineer, called it a “phenomenal flight,” adding that the rocket hit its altitude and inclination targets.
“This is a pretty historic milestone for Astra,” said Chris Kemp, Astra’s founder, chairman, and CEO. “Just over five years since we incorporated Astra and started building the facility we’re now in, we were able to learn our way to orbit, as we like to say, launch by launch, increasing the capabilities and operational efficiencies of our system along the way.
“And we’re now focusing on delivering for our customers and scaling up the production and the launch cadence of our system,” Kemp said.
Founded in 2016, Astra designed its rockets to deploy small payloads, pursuing a launch market to deliver CubeSats, nanosatellites, and microsatellites into orbit. With Saturday’s successful flight, Astra reached orbit a little more than five years since its founding, beating the six-year mark from the establishment of SpaceX until its first orbital flight with the Falcon 1 rocket in 2008.
Astra officials have said they eventually hope to launch daily, tapping demand from the U.S. military, commercial companies, and scientific institutions to rapidly deploy new space capabilities.
To do that, Astra wants to build rockets on an assembly line at its factory in Alameda, California, then ship the vehicles — along with required ground infrastructure — to distant launch sites in standard cargo trailers. A small team with less than a dozen engineers and technicians can set up the rocket and its mobile launch pad at an austere launch site in a few days.
Kemp said the successful launch into orbit proved Astra’s iterative development process, where engineers design, build, and test hardware and software, then rapidly redesign and retest systems if they fail.
“While it is less expensive for one of these smaller vehicles to fail, it still takes time, and time is money,” Kemp said.
Astra’s first orbit-capable rocket, named Rocket 3.0, was supposed to launch in February 2020 in an effort sponsored by the U.S. military’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to demonstrate responsive launch capability. But the mission did not get off the ground before DARPA’s deadline after a series of delays.
Astra intended to try again to launch Rocket 3.0, but the vehicle was destroyed in an accident during a wet dress rehearsal, or fueling test, at Kodiak.
Astra’s first orbital launch attempt Sept. 11, 2020, using Rocket 3.1, ended 30 seconds after takeoff when a guidance system problem caused the rocket to drift off course. In response, the rocket’s engines were commanded to shut down and the vehicle fell back to the spaceport on Kodiak Island.
On Dec. 15, 2020, Astra’s Rocket 3.2 nearly achieved enough speed to enter orbit. But the upper stage engine shut down just seconds before it was supposed to cut off, leaving the rocket just shy of orbital velocity. The vehicle re-entered the atmosphere, and most of it burned up.
Rocket 3.3 debuted several changes to Astra’s design when it launched for the first time Aug. 28.
It’s around 5 feet taller than the rockets Astra used for its first two orbital launch attempts last year. With stretched first stage tanks to hold more propellant, and a lighter second stage, the new rocket configuration can carry heavier cargo into orbit, according to Astra.
Astra also implemented a closed-loop control system on the first Rocket 3.3 mission, also called LV0006, to fix a propellant mixture issue that caused the previous launch last December to fail before seconds before reaching orbit.
The Aug. 28 mission was cut short by the premature shutdown of one of the rocket’s five kerosene-fueled Delphin main engines. The loss of thrust caused the rocket to briefly falter just above the launch pad, then veer sideways before the four remaining engines slowly propelled the vehicle into the sky.
With four of its five engines operating, the rocket’s guidance, navigation, and control system corrected course and tried to compensate for the thrust shortfall. But the vehicle climbed slower than designed.
After the rocket reached supersonic speed, a range safety officer on the ground issued a flight termination command about two-and-a-half minutes into the flight.
Astra engineers traced the problem to a propellant leak in the quick disconnect interface between the rocket and the launch pad.
The LV0007 mission was built on lessons learned from Astra’s previous orbital launch attempts.
“We’re out of the test flight phase,” Kemp said Monday. “We’ll be resuming with commercial payloads that will be operating for our customers in low Earth orbit. That’s not to say that there won’t be more test flights in the future. We have a new Rocket 4.0. We’ll be flying a few test flights of that next year. And that’s really something that we’ll have the opportunity to focus on right now. But the Rocket 3.X series will go into production, and we’ll go into launch operations.”
Kemp said the Rocket 3 series, in its current configuration, can haul a payload of around 110 pounds (50 kilograms) into a 310-mile-high (500-kilometer) mid-inclination orbit.
He said Astra has more than 50 launches in its backlog.
“I can only imagine that demand will continue to grow as we’ve seen over the past couple of years,” Kemp said. “So I think Astra really is in a position to deliver a payload to precise orbit on a precise schedule. And this precision has a lot of value to our customers, their ability to fly something when they need it flown to exactly the orbit, and have it there in 10 minutes. That’s a pretty powerful, unique capability that really just hasn’t been available at scale in this in this industry before.”
Kemp said Astra will expand to other launch sites. All of the company’s orbital launch attempts so far have lifted off from Alaska.
Astra’s next rocket, LV0008, is “well on its way to being integrated,” Lyon said Monday. Officials said details about the LV0008 launch would be announced soon.
Scott Higginbotham, head of NASA’s CubeSat Launch Initiative at Kennedy Space Center, said Friday that the space agency is the sole customer for the next Astra launch. The mission is part of NASA’s Venture Class Launch Services, or VCLS, program, which awarded Astra a $3.9 million contract last year for a commercial CubeSat launch.
Astra’s first launch for NASA could happen before the end of the year, according to Higginbotham.
NASA and Astra officials declined to identify the launch site for the VCLS demonstration mission, but multiple sources said the mission is currently slated to fly from pad 46, a commercial launch complex operated by Space Florida at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
Astra transports its launch vehicles and ground infrastructure from the company’s headquarters in shipping containers, requiring no permanent infrastructure at the launch site. During launch campaigns in Alaska, Astra teams set up the launch pad and rocket in less than a week.
The results from Saturday’s launch suggest no changes are needed on Astra’s next rocket, Kemp said.
ASTR going to settle down a bit. They put out a lot shares that dampened the run down a bit. Still a pretty good story for long positions somewhere in the settling.
I think we might have gained an advantage over the delay of launch this time. It will give the weekend for the story to be picked up by more main media (not just the space science media) and the social network. More power to the punch so to speak and more interest for Monday vs Friday. It gives time for more awareness and divulge into who Astra Space is, what they have going for them, the industry in general, and future demand and needs for that industry and ASTR products to address those needs. In other words, more solid money and more solid pps rise, not just the short term trading value. It also gave me the opportunity to pick up more shares in the low 9s before market open yesterday on the disappointment dip. Could of been a bad bet if the launch failed, but it was a success in this case.
A fun factoid; Today in history Nov 20, 1998 the first segment of the International Space Station was launched by the Russian proton rocket Zarya
We sure have come a long way since then. The ISS then came a long way from the first satellite Sputnick1 in 1957. A toast to what we will see in the future and Astra Space's part in that.
Astra rocket reaches orbit for 1st time on test flight for US military By Mike Wall about 6 hours ago
The fourth try was the charm for the Bay Area startup.
The Bay Area startup's 43-foot-tall (13 meters) Launch Vehicle 0007 (LV0007) lifted off from the Pacific Spaceport Complex on Alaska's Kodiak Island on Saturday (Nov. 20) at 1:16 a.m. EST (0616 GMT), carrying a dummy payload on a test flight for the U.S. military.
Just nine minutes later, LV0007's upper stage slipped into orbit about 310 miles (500 kilometers) above Earth, notching a huge milestone for Astra.
"We are absolutely bursting with pride at LV0007 — lucky number seven," Carolina Grossman, Astra's director of product management, said during a webcast of the launch. "This represents a huge, huge step in our mission to improve life on Earth from space."
Video: Watch Astra's Rocket 3.2 launch on its 1st successful flight
The upper stage of Astra's LV0007 powers its way to orbit on Nov. 20, 2021.
The upper stage of Astra's LV0007 powers its way to orbit on Nov. 20, 2021. (Image credit: Footage provided by NASASpaceflight LLC and Astra Space Inc.) Astra, which was founded in 2016, aims to secure a large portion of the small-satellite launch market with its line of cost-effective, ever-evolving rockets. Those rockets are designed to be highly responsive and flexible as well; Astra's entire launch system can be transported in just a few standard shipping containers.
The company already has a number of customers, some of whom are very high-profile. For example, in May, Astra announced that it had inked a launch contract with San Francisco company Planet, which operates the world's largest fleet of Earth-observing satellites.
And NASA selected Astra to launch its Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation Structure and Storm Intensity with a Constellation of Smallsats mission, or TROPICS for short. TROPICS will study hurricanes using six tiny cubesats, which Astra will loft over three launches in the first half of 2022, if all goes according to plan.
Saturday morning's launch was Astra's fourth-ever orbital test flight. The first attempt, in September 2020, ended shortly after liftoff when the company's rocket suffered a problem with its guidance system.
Astra was back on the pad just three months later for try number number two, which succeeded in reaching space. However, the company's rocket ran out of fuel just a few seconds before attaining orbital velocity.
The third attempt occurred on Aug. 28. Just after liftoff that day, one of the five first-stage engines on Astra's LV0006 conked out, causing the rocket to slide horizontally off the pad. The vehicle recovered nicely and soared high into the Alaska sky, but the flight ended up being terminated after about 2.5 minutes.
Click here for more Space.com videos... RELATED STORIES: —The history of rockets —Astra reaches space during 2nd orbital test launch —Astra goes public, becomes 1st launch company to trade on Nasdaq
All four of the orbital attempts to date have occurred from the Pacific Spaceport Complex, though Astra aims to launch from a variety of locations around the world eventually. The two most recent flights have been test missions for the U.S. military that carried dummy payloads not designed to be deployed.
We should expect more spaceflight action over the coming weeks and months from Astra, which hopes to ramp up to a nearly daily launch cadence by 2025.
"We have rocket serial number 8, 9, 10 in production," Astra CEO and co-founder Chris Kemp said during Saturday's webcast, just after LV0007 reached orbit. "We're just getting started."
Astra's ambitions extend beyond building and launching rockets. For example, the company is also developing its own satellite bus, which will allow customers to integrate their payloads into a spacecraft they don't have to build themselves. And Astra recently filed an application with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to assemble a constellation of 13,600 internet-beaming satellites.
Mike Wall is the author of "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.
Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: community@space.com.
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