Due to technical problems just before liftoff, the launch of a Rocket 3.3 rocket carrying four research cubesats on behalf of NASA has once again been postponed, California-based carrier developer Astra Space said.

A glitch in the onboard computer system was reportedly detected seconds before liftoff.

The launch was originally scheduled to take place as early as Saturday. However, due to malfunctions in the ground radar at the launch complex, it was twice postponed for a day.

The launch is now expected to take place no earlier than Tuesday from the launch pad SLC-46 at Cape Canaveral Space Center in Florida.

The $3.9 million ELaNa 41 mission, sponsored by NASA, put four satellites built by students from a number of U.S. universities and the U.S. space agency – BAMA-1, INCA, QubeSat and R5-S1 – into a 500-kilometer sun-synchronous orbit.

BAMA-1 was created by the University of Alabama. On it it is planned to work out the technology of emergency descent of the satellite from orbit. INCA cubosat was developed by the State University of New Mexico. It is designed for meteorological research. The University of California’s QubeSat will test quantum gyroscopes. RS-51 is built at NASA’s Johnson Space Center to test promising mini-satellite technologies.

The company made its first successful launch in October of last year. At that time, the Rocket 3.2 carrier rocket launched into orbit with an experimental vehicle in the interests of the U.S. Space Force from the Pacific Space Center on Kadyak Island (Alaska).

Prior to this, US space startup Astra Space, which began testing its lightweight launchers in 2018, had not had a single fully successful launch. All of them were either unsuccessful or partially successful.

The Rocket carrier is a two-stage rocket with five engines. It is supposed to launch up to 150 kilograms of payload into a 500-kilometer sun-synchronous orbit. The rocket is only 11.6 meters long and can be transported in a container to any launch facility.

According to the company’s CEO Chris Kemp, the high cost-effectiveness of the rocket may allow Astra Space to take a serious competitive position in the space launch market. The company claims its rocket will be the simplest and most technologically advanced launch vehicle in the world. The cost of one launch is about $2.5 mln. For comparison: the launch of Falcon 9 heavy class rocket of SpaceX is estimated at more than $60 mln.

Astra participated in the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) competition to develop a lightweight carrier to perform urgent launch of cargo into orbit, which is ordered by the Pentagon at least three to four days before launch.

“We want to be able to launch payloads into orbit on very short notice, with no advance notice of payload, orbit or launch site,” Todd Master, manager of the DARPA Launch Challenge program’s Tactical Technology Office, said at the time.