11:20 a.m. EDT Wednesday update: Adding Astra's plan to grow Rocket 4's payload capacity to more than 1,000 kilograms.
Astra is running out of money.
It's been a year since Astra shelved its first orbital-class rocket after just two successful launches in seven flights. Chris Kemp, Astra's founder and CEO, last year unveiled a new rocket design he said would be more reliable and capable of carrying heavier cargo into orbit.
A year later, the development of Astra's new launch vehicle—named Rocket 4—appears to have slowed to a crawl. Astra has outfitted a new production line for Rocket 4 at the company's headquarters in Alameda, California, but the company doesn't have enough money to move forward on the program as quickly as it would like.
Rocket 4 won't be ready for its first test flights until next year, Kemp said Monday in a quarterly earnings call. When Rocket 4 might be ready for revenue-earning commercial launches is even less clear, hinging on the results of the test flights, he said.
But it's a fair question whether Astra will ever launch Rocket 4.
In its first iteration, Astra's new launch vehicle will be able to haul up to 770 pounds (350 kilograms) of payload mass into a polar Sun-synchronous orbit, a destination favored by a significant slice of the small satellite market. The company has plans to grow the payload capacity to more than a metric ton, but Astra's rocket program is continuing to focus on dedicated small launches as other providers, like Rocket Lab, Relativity, and Firefly, are pivoting to larger vehicles in pursuit of more lucrative launch contracts. Virgin Orbit, which had an air-launch system with no path to grow for larger payloads, went out of business earlier this year.
Questions about the market for Rocket 4 aside, Astra is struggling to find the money to fund its development.
On August 4, exactly one year after announcing it would retire its first rocket design, Astra signaled that the new Rocket 4 program could be in trouble. The company said it reduced its overall workforce by about 25 percent, primarily in its launch, sales, and administrative divisions. In addition to the staff reduction, Astra says it has shifted around 50 employees from its launch services department to work on the company's electric propulsion systems used by on-orbit satellites.
After years in stealth mode, the startup opened its doors to the media in 2020 and became a public company in 2021.
Last month, Astra announced a stock sale in an attempt to raise up to $65 million, along with a reverse stock split—an apparent effort to boost its struggling stock price and keep its Nasdaq listing. Astra also said it received $10.8 million from a debt sale to an investment firm.
All of these efforts suggest Astra is in a fight for survival, and if the company does pull through, it may not be as a small satellite launch provider.
Short on cash
Kemp, Astra's chief executive, said these "difficult decisions" were "necessary to support a sustainable plan for Astra going forward."
As of the end of June, Astra reported $26.3 million of cash, cash equivalents, or marketable securities on its balance sheet, less than the company projected in its previous quarterly report. Astra forecasts that figure to fall to between $15 million and $20 million by the end of September. The company's net loss for the second quarter of this year was $14 million.
Despite the cost-cutting, layoffs, and plans for a stock sale, Astra said in its quarterly filing with the SEC that it still has "limited cash resources." The company said it will need additional capital to fund commercial-scale production. If Astra obtains "significant additional financing" and continues to limit capital expenditures, the company's management wrote that it expects to be able to continue operating for at least the next 12 months.
But those are big ifs, particularly the question of securing additional financing. Astra didn't address how long it might stay in business without a cash infusion. One investment analyst on the earnings call Monday suggested Astra might not make it to the end of the year at its current cash burn rate, but Astra's chief financial officer said the company's rate of cash expenses would decline for the rest of 2023.
"We're reducing our expenses as much as we possibly can," Kemp said. "But not so much that we're unable to deliver for our customers."
Astra's spacecraft engines division produces electric thrusters for small satellites, building on engineering work started by a company called Apollo Fusion, which Astra acquired in 2021. The company said it recently shipped the first four spacecraft engines from a new Bay Area factory, although each miniature engine requires up to a year more work to fully integrate them into customers' satellites.
The spacecraft engine business provides Astra with its most assured near-term revenue stream, with a backlog of nearly 300 committed engine orders. Astra's customers in this area include Airbus OneWeb Satellites, LeoStella, Loft Orbital, and Spaceflight.
