30.04.2018
KODIAK, ALASKA
After being canceled just minutes before liftoff, a test rocket manufactured by California-based Astra Space Inc. is scheduled to launch from Kodiak next month.
Officials at the Pacific Spaceport Complex did not give a cause for why an April 6 was scrubbed earlier this month, but confirmed the decision was not related to the spaceport facilities, the Kodiak Daily Mirror reported Friday.
The new launch is scheduled for May 10 or May 11, said Mike Morton, a director of the Alaska Aerospace Corp.
Astra has not yet filed a license with the Federal Aviation Administration for the upcoming launch, so it was unclear if any changes to the launch vehicle would be made.
The documents filed last month for the previous planned launch indicated that Astra was authorized to send up a suborbital vehicle to carry "an inert upper stage on a suborbital trajectory without a payload."
An inert upper stage module does not travel into space, the Daily Mirror reported.
Astra was incorporated in 2016 and is based out of Alameda, California.
The company operates out of a 17,000-square-foot (1,579-square-meter) facility formerly occupied by the U.S. Navy. A lease agreement filed with the California city states that the space company "designs, tests, manufactures and operates" launch equipment for transporting satellites.
The relatively secretive Astra lists itself as "Stealth Space Company" in public job postings. The newspaper could not reach Astra for comment.