Written by Samah Labib
Thursday, 09 February 2023 03:00 AM
The company’s first orbital launch has ended Virgin Orbit From UK soil that was supposed to be a major milestone for the company and the region failed because of an internal component that cost about $100, according to SpaceNews and quoted by engadget.
Dan Hart, CEO of Virgin Orbit, revealed at a SmallSat symposium in Mountain View, California that the evidence so far indicates that a filter part of the rocket’s second stage engine had dislodged and caused problems.
The company launched its historic “Start Me Up” mission from Spaceport Cornwall on January 9, and things seemed to be going smoothly at first. Virgin’s LauncherOne rocket was able to separate from its carrier aircraft, and the company reported a successful phased separation, but it soon became clear that the rocket was not able to reach orbit as planned.
“The upper stage of the rocket experienced an anomaly, and prematurely terminated the first upper stage burn,” a company spokesperson told Engadget at the time. They added, “This event completed the mission, with the rocket components and payload returning to Earth within the approved safety corridor without ever reaching orbit.”
And it was LauncherOne Rocket The mission carries satellites from seven customers, including government agencies, and one of its payloads was a joint project between the UK Defense Science and Technology Laboratory and the US Naval Research Laboratory called CIRCE (CubeSat Coordinated Ionospheric Reconstruction Experiment). Virgin Orbit promised a full investigation into the root cause of the anomaly, but didn’t wait for results to come back before announcing it would attempt a new UK launch later this year.
Hart said during the event that the company had not finished its investigation, but that he was confident enough to reveal the investigators’ findings: “Everything points to, at the moment, a candidate that was clearly present when we assembled the missile but was not.
And that’s where the second-stage engine kicked in, which means it got displaced and caused damage downstream,” he said, “that’s like the $100 part that took us out.” Hart also said that Virgin Orbit will no longer be using that filter and is currently looking into possible fixes.
