We're taking the Hollywood approach to naming. The first game is "Astra Protocol" this is "The Astra Protocol" :).
In all seriousness though, we found that with Astra Protocol 2, a lot of questions were "where's Astra Protocol 1?". We wanted this game to be a jumping on point for new players, but old players can still get on board - there's similar elements, but experience with the previous games will only get you so far. The ship you control has different capabilities and there's different menus, so there'll still be a learning experience.