Mission Reports

Two small NASA hurricane research satellites were destroyed after launch from Cape Canaveral Sunday when their commercial rocket, provided by Astra, prematurely shut down its upper stage engine before reaching the mission’s target orbit.

The first of three launches to deploy a fleet of six small NASA hurricane research satellites failed minutes after liftoff at 1:43 p.m. EDT (1743 GMT) Sunday from Cape Canaveral. The upper stage engine of Astra’s small commercial launcher shut down prematurely, leading to the loss of NASA’s first two TROPICS nanosatellites.

Astra is preparing to launch the first of three straight dedicated missions for NASA this weekend at Cape Canaveral to deploy six shoebox-size hurricane research satellites, helping pioneer a new paradigm of riskier but less expensive science missions.

A high-speed dust-size micrometeoroid slammed into one of the James Webb Space Telescope’s 18 primary mirror segments last month, causing a slight but noticeable effect on the segment’s performance, NASA said Wednesday. It was the fifth such impact detected since Webb’s Christmas Day launch.