It was all going according to plan. On Sunday, June 12 an Astra Rocket 3.3 launch vehicle blasted off on a journey to space. It launched at 1:43 p.m. Eastern from a pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying a payload of two NASA satellites designed to track and study tropical cyclones and other storms as they emerged and developed to a higher degree of accuracy and speed than existing storm satellite monitors.
