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Virgin Orbit Loses its First Rocket Shortly After Engine Ignition

posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday May 26 2020, @06:11AM   Printer-friendly
from the That's-what-testing-is-for dept.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Virgin Orbit loses its first rocket shortly after engine ignition:

After more than seven years of development, testing, and preparation, Virgin Orbit reached an important moment on Monday—dropping and igniting its LauncherOne rocket over the Pacific Ocean. Unfortunately, shortly after ignition an "anomaly" occurred, the company said.

"LauncherOne maintained stability after release, and we ignited our first stage engine, NewtonThree," the company stated on Twitter. "An anomaly then occurred early in first stage flight. We'll learn more as our engineers analyze the mountain of data we collected today."

This was the company's first attempt to ignite LauncherOne. Previously, it had strapped the liquid-fueled rocket to its modified 747 aircraft, and flown out over the Pacific Ocean, but not released the booster from beneath the plane's wing.

After Monday's launch attempt the crew on board the 747 and a chase plane safely made it back to the Mojave Air & Space Port without harm. The company stressed that it now has plenty of data to dig into, and is "eager" to get on to its next flight.

Here's the official press release from Virgin Orbit: Virgin Orbit

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 26 2020, @03:32PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 26 2020, @03:32PM (#999239)

    The carrier aircraft Cosmic Girl and all of its crew landed safely at Mojave Air and Space Port, concluding the mission.

    So what happened to the rocket? Did it land safely on the pacific garbage patch? Was it captured, probed and then beamed back to earth? Did it even leave the hangar?

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 26 2020, @08:16PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 26 2020, @08:16PM (#999361)

    Didn't you read the headline? They don't know, they lost it! Steve over in operations had ONE JOB to do: keep an eye on the rocket! And he couldn't even do that and he lost it. And he put his finger to his mouth and very cheekily said "Oops, I guess I did it this time!" and we all had a jolly laugh.