Streaks of molten badness
See those slender streaks spewing out from the engine plume on the far left? That’s molten metal, and that’s bad. It means the engine is cannibalizing itself, or as rocket scientists say, it’s a sign of combustion chamber burn-through. Astra ran this test in the wake of its Rocket 3.3 anomaly from 2022, finding the cause to be fuel injector blockage resulting in the burn-through. Astra announced the conclusions of its investigation in March.
