On Monday night, a witness recorded a failed Virgin Orbit rocket’s catastrophic return to Earth (Jan. 9).
At 5:02 p.m., the Virgin Orbit LauncherOne vehicle’s first stage rocket blasted off from England’s Spaceport Cornwall under the wing of the company’s Cosmic Girl carrier aircraft. Monday at 2202 EST (2202 GMT).
Virgin Orbit Failed Rocket
The “Start Me Up” Virgin Orbit project, named after the well-known Rolling Stones song from 1981, set intended to become the first spacecraft to ever launch from the United Kingdom, though Cosmic Girl actually dropped LauncherOne over the Atlantic Ocean off the southwest coast of Ireland.
But it wasn’t to be; the 70-foot-long LauncherOne (21-meter-long) experienced a problem and failed to enter orbit, resulting in the loss of nine little satellites.
On Monday at 6:18 p.m., LauncherOne’s first stage descended to the planet’s surface. EST (2318 GMT) (2318 GMT). Ramón López, an observer, recorded the tremendous fireball caused by the reentry from Lanzarote, one of the Canary Islands, off the west coast of Africa (opens in new tab).
Since the Canary Islands are under Spanish administration, Lopez works with the Spanish Meteor Network, which shared his footage on Twitter and YouTube (opens in new tab).
According to Dutch scientist and satellite tracker Marco Langbroek, there is no doubt that the video indeed captures the final seconds of LauncherOne’s first stage.
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‘Start Me Up’ Mission
On Monday night, a witness recorded a failed Virgin Orbit rocket’s catastrophic return to Earth (Jan. 9).
At 5:02 p.m., the Virgin Orbit LauncherOne vehicle’s first stage rocket blasted off from England’s Spaceport Cornwall under the wing of the company’s Cosmic Girl carrier aircraft. Monday at 2202 EST (2202 GMT).Tuesday morning, Langbroek tweeted, “The position of the sighting, sky location (low west-northwest as viewed from Lanzarote), and direction of movement of the reentering object, as well as time, correlate well with the launch trajectory.”
Prior to “Start Me Up,” Virgin Orbit had only experienced one failure, on its first-ever orbital test mission in May 2020, and was riding a wave of four straight launch successes.
Virgin Orbit identified a damaged fuel line in the rocket’s first stage as the cause of that mishap. It’s too early to determine if Virgin Orbit or the UK were to blame for the “‘tart Me Up’ oddity. Space Agency has begun an investigation to get to the bottom of it.
The ‘Start Me Up’ mission carried satellites for seven commercial and governmental customers, including two CubeSats for the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defense, the Omani AMAN Earth observation satellite, and Stork-6, the sixth satellite in Poland’s planned CubeSat constellation for Earth observation.
All of the satellites met the same demise after reentry, burning up with the rocket. A highly anticipated mission that was supposed to start a new era for the European space industry came to a dismal end. The UK and Virgin Orbit Space Agency have initiated an inquiry to establish the source of the rocket’s abnormality.
“We will work tirelessly to understand the nature of the failure, make corrective actions, and return to orbit as soon as we have completed a full investigation and mission assurance process,” Virgin Orbit CEO Dan Hart made a comment. After the mission’s failure, Virgin Orbit’s shares took a significant hit and dropped by nearly 22% in Tuesday’s premarket trade.
According to Virgin Orbit’s quarterly reports, which were published by Ars Technica, the company’s financial condition was already starting to appear quite dire. Through September 30, 2022, Virgin Orbit reported a net loss of $139.5 million.
Even after the most recent failure, the UK seems determined about developing a launch capability from British soil. Despite this, the project was successful in establishing a horizontal launch capability at Spaceport Cornwall, and Archer said the company is still dedicated to becoming the top supplier of commercial small satellite launches in Europe by 2030, with vertical launches scheduled from Scotland.
The UK has grounded LauncherOne for the time being. may turn to other businesses to launch their orbital launchers and place them in orbit.
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