Rocket Report: Tough times for Astra and Virgin; SpaceX upgrading launch pad
Welcome to Edition 6.19 of the Rocket Report! While we wait for SpaceX to launch the second full-scale test flight of Starship, a lot of the news this week involved companies with much smaller rockets. Astra is struggling to find enough funding to remain in business, and Virgin Galactic says it will fly its suborbital Unity spaceplane for the last time next year to focus on construction of new Delta-class ships that should be easier to turn around between flights. It's a tough time to raise money, and more space companies will face difficult decisions to stay alive in the months ahead.
As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.
VirginGalactic plans "pause" in flightoperations.Virgin Galactic will reduce the frequency of flights of its current suborbital vehicle and stop them entirely by mid-2024 as it concentrates resources on the next generation of vehicles, Space News reports. This was unexpected news for anyone outside of the company. As Ars has previously reported, Virgin Galactic has ramped up the flight rate for its VSS Unity suborbital spaceplane to about one mission per month, a rather impressive cadence, especially when Blue Origin, the other player in the suborbital human spaceflight market, has not flown any people to space in more than a year.