The acting head of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Peter Highnam, said today the organization has no plans to pursue a follow-on to the DARPA Launch Challenge, after the competition ended in March without a winner. DARPA announced the launch challenge about two years ago with the goal of demonstrating the ability to quickly respond to emerging launch needs. The program challenged teams to perform two launches within days of one another on very short notice and without key information about what payloads they'd carry or from where the mission would lift off. Eighteen companies pre-qualified for the launch challenge and the agency selected three finalists in April 2019, but two of those companies dropped out due to financial issues and competing customer demands. The lone participant, Astra, successfully produced its rocket and set up operations at the Pacific Spaceport in Alaska for a March 2 launch, but scrubbed it at the last minute, ending the program.
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