London CNN —
Virgin Orbit’s modified Boeing 747 jet – dubbed “Cosmic Girl” – took off from Newquay, in the English county of Cornwall, on Monday. 245 miles west of London, in a first launch for the country from British soil. But almost two hours after the plane left the ground and the rocket fired its engines to plummet into space, Virgin Orbit revealed the launch was a failure.
“It appears that LauncherOne has suffered an anomaly that will prevent us from getting into orbit for this mission,” said Christopher Relf, director of systems development and validation for Virgin Orbit in a Virgin Orbit live stream covering the launch. LauncherOne is the name of the air-launched rocket that hitchhiked along under the wing of the plane Cosmic Girl.
There were no people on board the rocket, which initially appeared to take off from the 747 jet without any problems, only satellites. Reif previously confirmed that the rocket’s second stage was rolling through orbit and preparing to fire its engine for a second burn. But he later revealed it didn’t go as intended.
“We’re looking at the information and data we’ve received,” he added. “And we will be back with you in a moment with more.”
A successor tweet of Virgin Orbit echoed Relf’s comments, reading: “We appear to have an anomaly that has prevented us from reaching orbit. We evaluate the information.”
Virgin Orbit’s Cosmic Girl plane and crew returned safely to the ground after liftoff Monday, the company confirmed on its live stream.
The company’s stock, which was already down almost 9% during Monday’s trading hours, lost another 28% after the close. As of 8:00 p.m. ET, the price was just $1.40 per share.
The event on Monday was aim To mark the first successful launch from the UK, the rocket is technically designed to launch while Cosmic Girl is in flight.
The modified Boeing 747 flew at about 35,000 feet (10.7 kilometers) before release the Rocket strapped under the wing.
Virgin Orbit expects LauncherOne to travel between 310 and 745 miles (499 and 1199 kilometers) above the Earth’s surface and then launch nine satellites into low Earth orbit.
It wasn’t immediately clear what caused the missile’s failure.
The launch was to be the first for Virgin Orbit – a subsidiary of Richard Branson’s Virgin Group – from commercial satellites from Western Europe and the first launch for Virgin Orbit outside the United States.
As of January 2021, the US-based company has conducted four successful launches from California’s Mojave Desert. The company has also had an earlier error. Virgin Orbit’s first launch attempt from California in May 2020 retired due to an engine problem.
Before the flight, Virgin Orbit CEO Dan Hart described the British mission as a “historic undertaking”.
“This launch represents the beginning of a new era in the UK space industry and new partnerships between industry, government and allies,” he said in a statement released on Friday.
The satellites on board as of Monday are owned by seven customers, including private companies and government agencies. The satellites should be used to prevent illegal trade, smuggling and terrorism, among other things, the company said in Friday’s press release, as well as to reduce the environmental impact of production.
The mission, named “Start Me Up” after the 1981 Rolling Stones song, was a joint venture between Virgin Orbit, the UK Space Agency, the local government of Cornwall and the UK Royal Air Force.
The launch should mark a major milestone in the UK’s growing commercial satellite sector.
The country has been working on commercial spaceports for several years to capture a larger share of the fast-growing global space market, which Morgan Stanley estimates could be worth over $1 trillion by 2040.
The country’s £16.5 billion ($20 billion) space industry directly supported about 47,000 jobs between 2019 and 2020, according to the latest government figures available.
Ian Annett, deputy chief executive of the UK Space Agency, said on Friday that the launch signaled a “new era” for the UK space industry [it] firmly on the map as Europe’s leading target for small commercial satellite launches.”
“The development of new space launch capabilities is already generating growth, catalysing investment and creating jobs in Cornwall and other communities across the UK,” he added.
The small satellite launch industry is a burgeoning business around the world, but particularly in the United States. Virgin Orbit was one of the first in a long list of startups trying to create small rockets that could quickly and cheaply launch lightweight satellites into orbit — a growing Business model that has dozens of global competitors. But the industry is also known to be fickle. Other small startups have also failed in recent months and years, including US-based companies like Firefly and Astra.