UNITED STATES
SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20549
FORM
CURRENT REPORT
Pursuant to Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934
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Check the appropriate box below if the Form 8-K filing is intended to simultaneously satisfy the filing obligation of the registrant under any of the following provisions:
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Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is an emerging growth company as defined in Rule 405 of the Securities Act of 1933 (§ 230.405 of this chapter) or Rule 12b-2 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (§ 240.12b-2 of this chapter).
Emerging growth company
If an emerging growth company, indicate by check mark if the registrant has elected not to use the extended transition period for complying with any new or revised financial accounting standards provided pursuant to Section 13(a) of the Exchange Act.
Item 8.01 Other Events.
On March 7, 2022, Astra Space, Inc. issued a press release announcing that Chris Kemp, Chairman and CEO, will participate in two events at Deutsche Bank’s Media, Internet & Telecom Conference on Monday, March 14, 2022. A copy of our press release is included in this current report on Form 8-K as Exhibit 99.1.
On March 7, 2022, the Company wrote a blog post, outlining the investigation results related to an anomaly that occurs in connection with its most recent launch from Cape Canaveral on February 10, 2022. The blog post is available on the Company’s website at www.astra.com. A copy of the blog post is included in this current report on Form 8-K as Exhibit 99.2.
Item 9.01 Financial Statements and Exhibits.
(d) Exhibits
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99.1 |
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104 |
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SIGNATURES
Pursuant to the requirements of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the registrant has duly caused this report to be signed on its behalf by the undersigned thereunto duly authorized.
Date: March 7, 2022 |
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Astra Space, Inc. |
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/s/ Kelyn Brannon |
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Kelyn Brannon |
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Chief Financial Officer |
Exhibit 99.1
Astra CEO to Participate in Deutsche Bank Media, Internet & Telecom Conference
ALAMEDA, California – March 7, 2022 – Astra Space, Inc. (“Astra”) (Nasdaq: ASTR), today announced that Chris Kemp, Founder, Chairman and CEO, will participate in two events at Deutsche Bank’s Media, Internet & Telecom Conference on Monday, March 14, 2022.
Live webcasts, as well as a replays, will be available on the Company’s investor relations website at
https://investor.astra.com/news-and-events/events-and-presentations.
About Astra Space, Inc.
Astra’s mission is to improve life on Earth from space by creating a healthier and more connected planet. Today, Astra offers one of the lowest cost-per-launch dedicated orbital launch service of any operational launch provider in the world. Astra delivered its first commercial payload into Earth orbit in 2021, making it the fastest company in history to reach this milestone, just five years after it was founded in 2016. Astra (NASDAQ: ASTR) was the first space launch company to be publicly traded on Nasdaq. Visit astra.com to learn more about Astra.
Safe Harbor Statement
Certain statements made in this press release are “forward-looking statements”. Forward-looking statements may be identified by the use of words such as “anticipate”, “believe”, “expect”, “estimate”, “plan”, “outlook”, and “project” and other similar expressions that predict or indicate future events or trends or that are not statements of historical matters. These forward-looking statements reflect the current analysis of existing information and are subject to various risks and uncertainties. As a result, caution must be exercised in relying on forward-looking statements.
Investor Contact:
Dane Lewis
investors@astra.com
Media Contact:
Kati Dahm
kati@astra.com
Exhibit 99.2
Title: LV0008 Post-Launch Investigation: What We Found and Next Steps
By Andrew Griggs, Senior Director, Mission Management & Assurance at Astra
Note: Astra has not yet finalized the LV0008 investigation with the FAA. Thus, the information in this blog post is preliminary until the investigation has been fully closed.
On February 10, 2022, we launched Launch Vehicle 0008 (LV0008). This was our first launch with a deployable customer payload and our first time launching from Cape Canaveral. After a nominal first stage flight, an anomaly occurred during the stage separation process which resulted in the upper stage not reaching orbit and the end of the mission. We immediately initiated our investigation process to determine the root cause of the anomaly. Now, we can share more about what we’ve learned to date.
What Happened:
Our investigation verified that the payload fairing did not fully deploy prior to upper stage ignition due to an electrical issue. The separation mechanisms (our fairing has 5 of these) were fired in an incorrect order, which resulted in off-nominal movement of the fairing that caused an electrical disconnection. Due to the disconnection, the last separation mechanism never received its command to open, which prevented the fairing from separating completely before upper stage ignition.
Separately, we discovered a software issue that resulted in the upper stage engine being unable to use its Thrust Vector Control system. This led to the vehicle tumbling after the off-nominal stage separation, and caused the end of the mission.
What We Learned:
The root cause of the fairing separation issue was an error in an electrical harness engineering drawing. This harness was built and installed onto the vehicle exactly as specified by our procedures and the engineering drawing, but the drawing error led to two harness channels (pictured below at the locations '4' and '5') being swapped. Prior to the LV0008 flight, we had conducted an end-of-line signal test to verify the separation system and ensure that the system was wired correctly. This test would have been able to detect an error in the harness build or installation, but it was unable to detect an error in the design. The swapped separation channels caused a different deployment sequence than we expected, and this led to the failure to open the fairing. We've been able to recreate the failure mode by conducting several experiments at our factory with real flight hardware, one of the benefits of having an active production floor with several launch vehicles in various states of production at the same time.
After determining the root cause of the software issue, we found that our flight control software was vulnerable to a specific "packet loss" failure mode. A missed series of signals resulted in a chain of events, resulting in the upper stage's inability to recover from its tumble. Although we had designed our software suite to be resilient to packet loss, an unlikely combination of factors caused a failure that we didn't predict. We have been able to use our hardware-in-the-loop
simulator to step through exactly what happened and diagnose the root cause with high confidence.
How We Fixed It:
Through the investigation process, we had identified two problems that needed fixing: the harness issue and the software issue. Soon after discovering the harness drawing error, we fixed the drawing and incorporated the change on previously built harnesses. We also implemented a new end-of-line signal test that will allow us to identify this class of issue in the future, if it were to occur, prior to launch. On the software side, we've introduced a trio of upgrades designed to make our system even more resilient to packet loss and other similar failure modes. Through constant iteration and extensive testing, we have been able to demonstrate that the changes eliminate the failure mode we saw on LV0008, while making the software suite much more robust.
Here at Astra, iteration and learning are core parts of our culture. I've been continuously impressed with the speed, passion, and diligence that the team showed as they worked through these complex issues to identify exactly what occurred and determine the right path forward to resolve each problem. With the root causes identified and corrective measures in place, we’re preparing to return to the launch pad with LV0009 soon - stay tuned!