The United Kingdom’s attempt to launch the maiden rocket into orbit from its soil concluded in failure on Tuesday. However, scientists have called this an “anomaly” as it almost reached its goal.
A Virgin Orbit Boeing 747 taking with it the 70-foot (21-meter) rocket lifted off from a spaceport in Cornwall, southwest England, at 2202 GMT (2:02 am MUT).
Read more here: https://t.co/9l1h82OsXY pic.twitter.com/RvBjMu9a5R
— Virgin Orbit (@VirginOrbit) January 10, 2023
At around 2315 GMT, the rocket then separated from the plane and was detonated as intended at a height of 35,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean to the south of Ireland.
Just when the rocket was about to enter orbit and release nine satellites, Virgin Orbit in a series of tweets said, “We appear to have an anomaly that has prevented us from reaching orbit. We are evaluating the information.
“As we find out more, we’re removing our previous tweet about reaching orbit. We’ll share more info when we can.”
As we find out more, we're removing our previous tweet about reaching orbit. We'll share more info when we can.
— Virgin Orbit (@VirginOrbit) January 9, 2023
The rocket came back to earth according to the plan to a low Spaceport Cornwall, a consortium that includes Virgin Orbit and the UK Space Agency, at Cornwall Airport Newquay.
#CosmicGirl has returned safely back to @SpaceCornwall with our flight crew.
— Virgin Orbit (@VirginOrbit) January 10, 2023
The UK-origin rocket launch has been the first from the country. Before this, UK-made satellites were sent off to space via foreign spaceports. But only in a situation wherein this mission had been successful, the UK would have joined the list of nine countries to have successfully launched a rocket into Earth’s orbit.
Before the launch, Melissa Thorpe, Chief, Spaceport Cornwall, told BBC, “Joining that really exclusive club of launch nations is so important because it gives us our own access to space… that we’ve never had before here in the UK.”
At the time of the launch, named “Start Me Up”, a Rolling Stones song was played while hundreds of people witnessed the launch.
The satellites were equipped with a variety of civil and defense functions, ranging from monitoring seas, enabling countries to detect smugglers, to help analyze space weather.
Space bases in Europe have grown recently as space commercialization has grown.
The majority of Europe’s spaceport projects are now private-sector efforts, whereas satellites were previously primarily employed for institutional missions by state space agencies.
