Astra plans mid-2026 first launch of Rocket 4

PARIS — Astra is targeting next summer for the first flight of its Rocket 4 vehicle as the company prepares to reenter the launch market.

In a presentation at the World Space Business Week conference here Sept. 17, Chris Kemp, chief executive of Astra, said the company was on track for a first launch of Rocket 4 in summer 2026 from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Astra announced plans for Rocket 4 in 2022 and at one point projected a first flight of the vehicle in 2023. Development, though, was hindered by problems with Astra’s smaller Rocket 3.3 vehicle, which was retired in mid-2022 after several failures, as well as financial issues that culminated in the company going private in July 2024.

He highlighted progress Astra is making on Rocket 4, such as tests of a new engine the company developed for the vehicle’s first stage that produces 42,000 pounds of thrust. Two of those engines will power the first stage, while the upper stage will use a single Hadley engine produced by Ursa Major.

The vehicle will initially be capable of placing about 750 kilograms into low Earth orbit for a price of $5 million. “That’ll be very competitive,” he said in an interview after the presentation, similar to what SpaceX charges for payloads of that size through its rideshare program. “At this point, I think that’s a nice target for us to have.”

The company is targeting customers seeking alternatives to SpaceX in a constrained launch market. “There’s a lot of interest because of the fear that there’s just not a lot of capacity,” he said, particularly for satellites too large to launch on Rocket Lab’s Electron.

The summer 2026 inaugural launch will be a test flight, Kemp said, followed by one in October or November for the Defense Department’s Space Test Program. Astra plans quarterly launches of Rocket 4 in 2027, with long-term goals for much higher launch rates.

Astra has maintained plans to make Rocket 4 a transportable launch system using standard shipping containers, allowing it to operate from sites with little more than a concrete pad.

“We’re the only tactical launch system, probably for the foreseeable future,” he said. Besides launches from Cape Canaveral and Alaska’s Kodiak Island, which Astra previously used for Rocket 3 launches, Kemp said the company is exploring opportunities to fly Rocket 4 from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.

Astra is financing work on Rocket 4 through its military contracts, which include the Space Test Program award and a separate one from the Defense Innovation Unit, as well as sales of spacecraft electric propulsion systems. Kemp said the 125-person company expects $50 million in revenue this year from thruster sales, with excess cash invested in launch development.

“Astra is a very profitable company that is choosing to spend its profits on getting to the pad as soon as it can,” he said.