Virgin Orbit’s first rocket launch from UK fails
A rocket launched by a Virgin Orbit Holdings Inc. 747 aircraft failed to deploy its nine satellites as planned Monday, sending the company’s shares plunging.
It’s an unexpected ending for the mission, which would have added Britain to the ranks of countries able to launch from their own soil. Virgin Orbit shares fell 25% in after-hours trade.
Virgin Orbit’s modified 747 plane “Cosmic Girl” took off from Spaceport Cornwall at 10:02 p.m. local time, carrying the company’s LauncherOne rocket underneath its wing.
At an altitude of roughly 35,000 feet, the rocket successfully deployed from Cosmic Girl and ignited its main engine. However, sometime during the flight the vehicle suffered an unknown anomaly, leading to the loss of the mission.
“It appears that LauncherOne has suffered an anomaly which will prevent us from making orbit for this mission,” Christopher Relf, Virgin Orbit’s director of Systems Engineering and Verification, said during a livestream of the launch.
“We are looking at the information and data that we have gotten.”
Virgin Orbit originally tweeted that the launch had reached orbit. However, later it said an anomaly occurred that prevented the rocket reaching orbit and deleted the initial tweet.
Today’s launch was Virgin Orbit’s sixth attempt to reach orbit, and the second in-flight failure. So far, the company has successfully launched to orbit four times from Mojave, California.
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