An “anomaly” prevented the launch. An attempt to launch the first rocket from British soil into space failed in the night from Monday to Tuesday. “It appears we have an anomaly preventing us from reaching orbit,” tweeted Virgin Orbit, the company that organized this mission, which should catapult the UK into the “exclusive” club of countries, the spacecraft can send.
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The Virgin Orbit Boeing 747 carrying the 21-metre rocket took off from Cornwall Spaceport, a consortium that includes Virgin Orbit and the British Space Agency, at Newquay Airport in the south west of Monday evening at 00:02 (French time). England. The purpose of the mission was to launch nine satellites into space, which would have been a major first for Britain.
“A very exclusive club”
The rocket then separated from the aircraft and its engines ignited at around 01:15 (French time) at an altitude of 35,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean south of Ireland. But the “anomaly” of unspecified kind prevented it from achieving the desired orbit. Hundreds of people attended the launch of the mission, named “Start Me Up” after the Rolling Stones hit song, and provided by British billionaire Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit company, which specializes in space launches for small satellites.
If successful, Britain would become the ninth country in the world capable of launching satellites. “Joining this very exclusive club of launch countries is so important because it gives us our own access to space, this sovereign access to space that we have never had in the UK before,” underlined Melissa Thorpe, pre-launch director the BBC of Cornwall Cosmodrome. She reminded that since the invasion of Ukraine, Europe has lost its access to the Russian Soyuz launch vehicle, which has threatened its access to space.
Launch a rocket from an airplane
Dubbed LauncherOne, the 21-metre rocket was fitted under the wing of a modified Boeing 747 dubbed Cosmic Girl. Once at the correct altitude, the plane released the rocket, which then started its own engine to propel itself. The aircraft then returned to Spaceport Cornwall. Launching a rocket from an airplane is easier than a vertical take-off because, in theory, a simple runway will suffice instead of an expensive launch pad.
In the past, Virgin Orbit, which offers a fast and adaptable space launch service for satellites between 300 and 500 kg, has put other aircraft-launched rockets into orbit. Founded in 2017 by Richard Branson, the company first succeeded in launching a rocket using this method from a Boeing 747 that was leaving the California desert in January 2021.
Further launches planned
Nine satellites were to be put into orbit for the UK launch, with different purposes, “from Earth observation and monitoring illegal fishing to building satellites and products to make them in space,” explained Melissa Thorpe. So far, British satellites have had to be launched from abroad, but the country is trying to support its aerospace industry after its role in European projects was called into question by Brexit.
In addition to the spaceport in Cornwall, the UK plans to open a space base in Sutherland in northern Scotland and another on an island in Shetland. According to a statement from the Scottish Government in early January, launches from these two bases are planned “in the coming months”.