One consequence of the coronavirus pandemic is showing up in an unlikely place: the space industry.

A summer surge in COVID-19 patients is diverting liquid oxygen from rocket launch pads to hospitals, leading NASA to announce Friday it will delay the September launch of its next earth-surveillance satellite by a week.

Oxygen chilled to its liquid form at minus 300 Fahrenheit is a crucial propellant for launch firms from SpaceX to ULA to Virgin Orbit. Now the industry is anticipating launch delays as patients on ventilators take precedence in the commodity gas supply chain.

"People come first," said Richard Craig, vice president of technical and regulatory affairs for the Compressed Gas Association, an industry trade group.

While oxygen supplies have grown tighter nationwide due to medical use of oxygen, the need is most acute in Florida where a surge in COVID infections have filled hospitals.

Some Florida cities, including Orlando and Tampa, have imposed water-use restrictions because some water-treatment plants use oxygen in the sanitizing process.

Labor shortages among commercial truck drivers, which must have specialized training to transport some gasses such as oxygen, have also compounded the supply bottlenecks, Craig said.

The company's 45-foot tall rocket took off unsteadily from a pad at the Pacific Spaceport Complex in Alaska, flew for more than 2 minutes and then suffered what Astra described as "technical difficulties."

The machine was carrying a test payload for the U.S. Space Force. Astra had its most successful launch in December, when its rocket reached space and then just missed reaching orbit.

Based in Alameda, California, Astra competes with industry leader Rocket Lab USA Inc., which has completed almost two dozen flights dating back to 2017 and is now busy working on a larger vehicle. Virgin Orbit, a private Richard Branson venture separate from Virgin Galactic, completed its first commercial mission in June.

Astra shares jumped 21% last week, after tumbling in July. The company, which recently went public via a special purpose acquisition company run by telecommunications billionaire Craig McCaw, said it had gathered valuable data from the flight and has more rockets ready to test again soon.