Virgin Orbit’s launch from the UK ends in failure
(Virgin Orbit / YouTube)
The first space launch from British territory ended in failure.
The LauncherOne vehicle from Virgin Orbit could not reach the desired orbit due to a malfunction in the second stage.
This resulted in the loss of a payload of nine small satellites.
Until recently, the UK did not have its own space launch site in its territory.
The four launches of the British Black Arrow rocket took place from the Australian Woomera test site in 1969-1971.
Two rocket launches were successful, and one of them was the experimental communication satellite "Prospero X-3".
The situation changed last year when the private space company Virgin Orbit received a space launch license from the Cornwall Spaceport, located in the southwest of the UK.
THE LAUNCH
Virgin Orbit uses the lightweight two-stage launcher LauncherOne, which uses air launch technology.
The carrier is the Boeing 747 Cosmic Girl aircraft, which takes the rocket to an initial height of 10 kilometers and drops it, after which it begins its flight to near-Earth orbit.
The launch, designated Start Me Up, began at 10:02 local time on January 10, and an hour later the rocket separated from the aircraft.
The first stage of the rocket worked normally.
However, an anomaly occurred at the engine of the second stage, which caused nine small satellites not to reach sun-synchronous orbit.
The batch included two cubesats from Oman designed to study the ionosphere.
The company said they were still investigating the causes of the failure.
Sources:
- Virgin Orbit: https://virginorbit.com/the-latest/historic-uk-mission-reaches-space-falls-short-of-orbit/
- CNN: https://edition.cnn.com/2023/01/09/business/virgin-orbit-uk-satellite-launch-scn/index.html
- NASA Spaceflight: https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2023/01/virgin-orbit-start-me-up/
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