The company Virgin Orbit announced on Tuesday that the first space launch in the United Kingdom failed after the rocket presented an “anomaly” that did not allow the nine satellites on board to be put into orbit.
“It seems we have an anomaly that prevented us from reaching orbit. We are evaluating the information,” Virgin Orbit announced on the social network Twitter.
The company later announced that the modified Boeing 747 aircraft named “Cosmic Girl” had “safely returned” to Newquay Airport in Cornwall, in the south-west of the United Kingdom, with the crew on board.
#Cosmic Girl has returned safely to @SpaceCornwall with our flight crew.
– Virgin Orbit (@VirginOrbit) January 10, 2023
Cosmic Girl, carrying a 70-foot (21-meter) rocket, lifted off at 10:02 p.m. Monday from Spaceport Cornwall, a consortium that includes Virgin Orbit and the UK Space Agency.
The aircraft flew to 10,600 meters over the Atlantic Ocean and then launched, at around 11:15 p.m., the rocket, named LauncherOne, which contained nine satellites that would be put into orbit.
The satellites had various purposes, “from observing the Earth to monitoring illegal fishing, through the construction of satellites and products to manufacture them in space,” the director of Spaceport explained to BBC television before the launch. Cornwall, Melissa Thorpe.
Matt Archer, director of commercial flights for the UK Space Agency, explained that the first stage of the launch was “successful”, having gone “as expected”, but that the second stage had “some kind of anomaly”.
“We don’t know what it is and, again, there will be an investigation in the next few days to find out, but it will effectively not reach the necessary altitude to deploy the satellites,” Archer added to ITV News.
The official added that although the mission was not successful, it “proved” that it is possible for the UK to reach space, so “everything is set to do another launch in the future.”
Virgin Orbit attempted to reach a milestone by launching the first rocket from Europe. Currently, only eight countries have the capacity to put devices into orbit from their own territory.
“Joining this very exclusive club of launch countries is very important because it gives us our own access to space, this sovereign access to space that we’ve never had before in the UK,” said the director of Spaceport Cornwall.
Melissa Thorpe recalled that Europe has lost access to the Russian Soyuz space shuttle since the invasion of Ukraine.
The Virgin Orbit launch created excitement in the UK, with thousands of people flocking to Cornwall to witness the launch.
Hundreds of people watched the beginning of the mission, called “Start Me Up” in reference to the success of the Rolling Stones.
In addition to the Cornish Spaceport, the United Kingdom wants to open a space base in Sutherland, in the north of Scotland, and another in the Shetland archipelago, located between the Faroe Islands and Norway.
The Scottish government said in early January that these two bases are expected to come online “in the coming months.”
Source: TSF
