JAKARTA - Virgin Orbit stated that the failure to launch a LauncherOne rocket carrying satellites to be delivered into Earth's orbit was caused by an early halt to the rocket.
After taking off from Spaceport Frankfurt on Monday night January 9, the Cosmic Girl rocket carrier flew to an altitude of 35,000 feet above the Atlantic Ocean, where it dumped a rocket containing nine small satellites into space.
However, the organizer of the Start Me Up mission, Virgin Orbit itself, immediately identified the anomaly and said the LauncherOne rocket failed to orbit.
In a statement, Virgin Orbit explained that preliminary data showed the first stage of the rocket was working as expected, reaching a space altitude, and the separation of the top stages and lighting occurred in line with the mission plan.
However, at an altitude of about 180 km, the upper stage experienced an anomaly that ended the first burning before its time.
Due to this incident, the mission then ended, with rocket components and payloads burned or burst into the atmosphere as it fell back to Earth off the coast of Lanzarote.
Currently, Virgin Orbit has launched a formal investigation into the source of the second phase of failure, but they look forward to returning to Spaceport Cornwall for additional launches later this year.
"We are all disappointed that we were unable to achieve the success of the full mission and provide launch services that our customers deserve," said Virgin Orbit CEO Dan Hart.
"After identifying the anomaly, our team immediately switched to previously planned investigation mode," he added.
Hart, added Virgin Orbit had begun an internal investigation into the root cause of the failure.
Launching DailyMail, Friday, January 13, hundreds of community members and more than 75,000 watched the live broadcast of the launch of the rocket.
Named as an award for the Rolling Stones album in 1981, the mission involved Virgin Atlantic's Boeing 747 aircraft whose function has been changed and Virgin Orbit's LauncherOne rocket.
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