Virgin Orbit scrambles to establish why first UK satellite launch failed

Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit was scrambling on Tuesday to untangle the causes of its failed attempt to put satellites into orbit from Cornwall in south-west England.

The launch late on Monday evening was meant to have been a historic moment for Britain, which was aiming to become the first country to put a commercial payload into space from western Europe. It was also the first attempt by Virgin Orbit, 75 per cent controlled by Branson’s Virgin Group, to deploy its unique “horizontal launch system” outside the US. 

However, within minutes of being released from the converted 747 jumbo jet at 35,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean, the US-built LauncherOne rocket encountered problems. “At some point during the firing of the rocket’s second-stage engine and with the rocket travelling at a speed of more than 11,000 miles per hour, the system experienced an anomaly, ending the mission prematurely,” the company said in the early hours of Tuesday.

The failure raises doubts about whether the UK can win Europe’s “space race”, targeting the rapidly growing market for small satellite launches, with spaceports in Norway and Sweden both close to becoming operational. The spaceport in Cornwall, based at Newquay airport, is the first of seven planned for the UK.

Space analysts Euroconsult estimate that 18,500 satellites weighing less than 500kg will be launched into low-earth orbit over the next decade. This is the new frontier for a rapidly expanding commercial space sector, where services such as high-speed broadband and climate monitoring will be delivered from smaller spacecraft orbiting closer to earth.

Ian Annett, deputy head of the UK Space Agency, said he remained confident that the UK could still beat other European rivals when one of the traditional vertical launch sites opens. “We are making great progress with vertical launch sites [which are] on track to deliver their first launch this year.”

Frank Strang, chief executive of the SaxaVord spaceport in the Shetland Islands, which is aiming to complete a vertical launch this year, said he was “desperately disappointed” that the Virgin mission had failed.

But he did not regard Monday’s event as a failure for the UK as it had shown the country could develop a regulatory and licensing regime from scratch. “Going through that whole exercise for the first time is painful but we as a country have shown we can do that. The failure was in an American launcher. The UK can’t take responsibility for that,” he said.

US-based Virgin Orbit has appointed a team to investigate the failure, including an independent reviewer, and it said on Tuesday evening it was “too early” to set a date for when it might be ready for another attempt from Cornwall. Earlier, Virgin Orbit chief executive Dan Hart said the company would work “tirelessly” to get back into orbit.

It is the first failure of a commercial flight for Virgin Orbit in five missions. However, a test flight in 2020 failed shortly after the rocket was launched, with the inquiry taking two months to conclude there were problems with the first-stage engine.

Once the cause of Monday night’s failure is known, Virgin will have to apply for a new launch licence, which would take time.

Delays on the project have cost Virgin Orbit. The group scaled back the number of missions it planned to conduct last year because of the complications of getting the first launch licence in the UK. The flight from Cornwall was to be a blueprint for the company’s attempts to expand partnerships with new spaceports around the world.

Failed launches are not unusual, said Armand Musey, space analyst at Summit Ridge Group. “Building a launch vehicle is a complicated undertaking and launch vehicles often experience failures in their first several launches. The issue is whether Virgin can fix this quickly.”

But the lossmaking company “likely needs more cash” to develop the cadence of launches it needs, he added. “It went through over $120mn in the first three quarters of 2022 bringing its cash balance to a negative $71.2mn on 30 September 2022, [and is] likely lower by the end of the fourth quarter even after a $25mn raise in November.”

The shares of Nasdaq-listed Virgin Orbit fell sharply after Monday night’s failure, closing down 14 per cent at $1.66 in New York, less than a fifth of the level a year ago.

Meanwhile, customers of the failed UK mission will now have to replace their lost satellites and either wait for Virgin to recover, or seek an alternative launch vehicle.

Nine satellites were onboard from seven customers, including a test navigation satellite from Belgium-based Rhea group, a payload designed to track maritime activity from the UK’s Satellite Applications Catapult government-funded innovation hub, and a demonstrator satellite from UK start-up Space Forge. Not all of the lost satellites were fully insured, according to several sources.

One customer said he heard the news over a loudspeaker at about 11:40pm while standing on Newquay airport’s cold and windy tarmac awaiting the return of the 747 launch aircraft.

The loudspeaker had been blasting the sounds of “Start Me Up” by the Rolling Stones — in honour of the mission’s name — when “a dry announcement came on saying there had been an anomaly and it looks like the launch failed to reach orbit. Then the music started again,” he said. “What was that about?”

Lucy Edge, chief operating officer of the SatApp Catapult, said she would be pressing Virgin for more information about the failure. “We expect them to give us more information quickly. I will start to chase them later today.”

She said she would be looking at “any launch that lines up with our timescales anywhere in the world”, for the next two satellites in the planned maritime tracking constellation.

But Emma Jones, UK business director of the Rhea Group, was less critical. “Space is hard,” she said. “I am pretty sure that Virgin will be back.”

Jones said she reacted to news of the failure by returning to her hotel and sharing a bottle of champagne with her team. “Then we started working on the next satellite.”