{"id":40442,"date":"2023-01-10T12:32:36","date_gmt":"2023-01-10T12:32:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.skyatnightmagazine.com\/?p=114983"},"modified":"2023-01-10T13:32:35","modified_gmt":"2023-01-10T13:32:35","slug":"first-launch-from-uk-soil-ends-in-failure","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/rss_feed\/first-launch-from-uk-soil-ends-in-failure\/","title":{"rendered":"First launch from UK soil ends in failure"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>

By Ezzy Pearson\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Tuesday, 10 January 2023 at 12:00 am<\/p>

\n\n

The first attempt to launch a rocket from UK soil at Spaceport Cornwall<\/a> ended in failure, following an anomaly with Virgin Orbit\u2019s LauncherOne rocket\u2019s second stage.<\/p>\n

The mission was intended to deploy nine satellites into low-Earth orbit, but these a have been lost.<\/p>\n

Virgin Orbit\u2019s \u2018Start Me Up\u2019 mission launched from Spaceport Cornwall just after 10pm on 9 January 2023. 2,000 people had been granted access to watch the launch and spirits were high as the initial part of the mission seemed to go well.<\/p>\n

The plane flew out to the Atlantic Ocean just blow the southern coast of Ireland<\/a>, climbing to 35,000ft before dropping the rocket around 11:50pm.<\/p>\n

Four seconds later, LauncherOne\u2019s first stage fired, accelerating the rocket to 13,000km\/h.<\/p>\n

\"""\"<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>
Virgin Orbit\u2019s launch could not reach altitude following an anomaly with the rocket\u2019s second stage.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n

However, when the second stage was meant to fire, an as yet undisclosed anomaly occurred, so it didn\u2019t burn enough to reach the 500km altitude needed to deploy the satellites.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat didn\u2019t happen tonight,\u201d says Matt Archer from the UK Space Agency who was at the launch. \u201cWhat you have seen is that it has reached space but hasn\u2019t reached the required orbit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fortunately, no human lives were endangered by the failure, as the rocket release happens over a remote section of the Atlantic Ocean just in case of such a failure.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe rocket will probably break up, not all of it will burn up, but certainly that\u2019s what they will be tracking at the moment and making sure that it is coming down safely,\u201d says Archer. \u201cThe trajectory that it was on shouldn\u2019t be anywhere near land.\u201d<\/p>\n

Launch is the riskiest part of any space launch and the time that satellite manufacturer\u2019s most dread. Though the space craft were insured, the time and dedication spent creating them is irreplaceable.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s pretty devastating. We put our heart and soul into this phenomenal journey.\u201d says Melissa Thorpe, head of Spaceport Cornwall and who has been overseeing the adaptations made at Cornwall Airport Newquay since it was first selected as the site of a UK spaceport<\/a> five years ago. \u201cWe\u2019ll have to wait for the data to understand what happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

This data will help not only find out what went wrong, but also learn how to ensure it doesn\u2019t happen again. After all, failure is an integral part of the learning process.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve had a lot of people reach out to us like Space X, who all said they\u2019ve been there too,\u201d says Thorpe. \u201cSpace is hard. It\u2019s always a risk but we have a spaceport and we have a space launch. It shows that Cornwall can do it and we will do it again.\u201d<\/p> <\/body><\/html>\n

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By Ezzy Pearson Published: Tuesday, 10 January 2023 at 12:00 am The first attempt to launch a rocket from UK soil at Spaceport Cornwall ended in failure, following an anomaly with Virgin Orbit\u2019s LauncherOne rocket\u2019s second stage. The mission was intended to deploy nine satellites into low-Earth orbit, but these a have been lost. Virgin […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":40443,"template":"","categories":[1],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"3"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2023\/01\/first-launch-from-uk-soil-ends-in-failure.jpg",1200,674,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2023\/01\/first-launch-from-uk-soil-ends-in-failure-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2023\/01\/first-launch-from-uk-soil-ends-in-failure-300x169.jpg",300,169,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2023\/01\/first-launch-from-uk-soil-ends-in-failure-768x431.jpg",768,431,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2023\/01\/first-launch-from-uk-soil-ends-in-failure-1024x575.jpg",800,449,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2023\/01\/first-launch-from-uk-soil-ends-in-failure.jpg",1200,674,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2023\/01\/first-launch-from-uk-soil-ends-in-failure.jpg",1200,674,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"By Ezzy Pearson Published: Tuesday, 10 January 2023 at 12:00 am The first attempt to launch a rocket from UK soil at Spaceport Cornwall ended in failure, following an anomaly with Virgin Orbit\u2019s LauncherOne rocket\u2019s second stage. The mission was intended to deploy nine satellites into low-Earth orbit, but these a have been lost. Virgin…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/40442"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}