Footage obtained by TechCrunch shows the catastrophic ending that Astra’s Rocket 3.0 suffered during prelaunch testing in March 2020.
“I can confirm we had an anomaly on the launch pad,” Alaska Aerospace CEO Mark Lester told local reporters at the time.
At the time, Astra was taking such failures in stride.
The deal is expected to close sometime this quarter, at which time Astra will cease trading on the Nasdaq.
Astra did not return a request for comment on the 2020 launch failure.
In the past three years, a lot of companies launched DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) initiatives, and we even saw a brief period when those promises were fulfilled.
When the market was on the up and up, Black founders, like many other founders out there, were raising record amounts.
But come 2022, the market dipped, interest rates skyrocketed, investments nearly froze, hiring slowed, and widespread layoffs hit everyone.
Today, it almost feels like many of the promises the venture capital industry made in 2020 have gone unfulfilled.
To find out exactly how many kept their word, we checked up on some of those that made commitments to DEI following the BLM protests in 2020.Who kept their word?
