The failed attempt to launch satellites into space from Britain for the first time has dealt a harsh blow to the country’s emerging space program.
Britain’s space-business community was full of optimism on Monday, with a ticket-paying crowd looking on as a modified Boeing 747 carrying a rocket stuffed with nine satellites took off from an airport in Cornwall in southwest England.
It was just before midnight when things soured. The rocket successfully separated from the plane and fired its first-stage engine. But, at a speed of more than 11,000 miles an hour, the rocket “experienced an anomaly, ending the mission prematurely,” according to Virgin Orbit, the California-based company behind the launch.
A spokeswoman for Virgin Orbit said Tuesday afternoon that the company had not yet completed its analysis of the flight data but it appeared that the rocket never reached orbit, and that the second stage, which carried the satellites, had mostly burned up on re-entry off the west coast of Africa.
Matt Archer, the director of commercial spaceflight at the UK Space Agency,
said that British regulators were reviewing the incident with Virgin Orbit, trying to discover “what happened, what caused the issue and how they can correct it going forward.”
While the 747 and its crew returned safely, the nine satellites aboard the rocket were lost. The destruction of these high-tech devices means that their makers and sponsors have potentially lost years of work.
“We are mindful that we failed to provide our customers with the launch service they deserve,” Dan Hart, Virgin Orbit’s chief executive, said in a statement on Tuesday.
Failures in space launches are not unusual, and, at first glance, this one seems unlikely to deter Britain’s effort to become a country that not only can make satellites but also launch them.
“When walking back from the airfield, there was a definite stoic and resilient feeling that this isn’t the end of it,” said Emma Jones, the U.K. business director of RHEA Group, a Belgian space security company, which had a satellite aboard the rocket.
Another company taking a hit was In-Space Missions, a British satellite maker. A team at the company had spent the last couple of years making a pair of small surveillance devices for the launch, funded by an agency of the British Ministry of Defense.
“Our two satellites would have been two of the most complex and magnificent satellites in the night sky,” said Doug Liddle, the company’s chief executive. “To have lost those is very upsetting for everyone.” Most of the devices on board were probably not insured, he said.
Still, British officials and people in the space industry say that even though the launch went awry, it represents important advances. To stage the launch, Britain has had to develop both the necessary infrastructure and regulatory regimes, a lengthy process.
“We didn’t quite make it over the line, but we have made it most of the way there,” Mr. Liddle said.
In recent years, the British government has grown more interested in space, particularly under former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who left office last year. Britain has long had a satellite manufacturing industry, including companies that make miniature devices known as cubesats that are increasingly being used for communications networks and other purposes.
The country’s space industry has pushed for a launch capability to give it an edge that would allow it to test devices more easily. The idea has won support among some circles in government.
The war in Ukraine has provided added incentive to the goal of launching from one’s own country, partly because Britain and other countries can no longer rely on paying for rides aboard Russian launch vehicles, as they once did. In addition, the heavy use of satellites in the Ukraine conflict for reconnaissance and communications has underscored the growing importance of space for national security.
Many of the devices on board the Virgin Orbit rocket fit this description, including those developed by In-Space Missions. The RHEA Group satellite was to be tested as part of a backup network in case Global Positioning System navigation system was knocked out by a cyberattack or technical problem.
Also on board was a cubesat made by AAC Clyde Space, a Scottish company, designed to track illegal fishing, smuggling and other maritime activities. Another satellite was a communications device for Oman, a Persian Gulf emirate.
British government funding and private money, totaling about 20 million pounds, or $24 million, helped develop Newquay Airport in Cornwall to make it ready to handle satellites, according to Melissa Thorpe, the head of Spaceport Cornwall, where Monday night’s flight originated.
While it is difficult to say what effect Monday’s launch failure might have on future government support in Britain, the country’s space industry has momentum. Preparations for vertical rocket launches are already well underway at two sites in Scotland.
“The commitment remains as solid as it was yesterday,” said Mr. Archer of the UK Space Agency. “We always knew that these projects carried risk,” he added.
Virgin Orbit, founded by the British entrepreneur Richard Branson, also seems inclined to return, although Mr. Hart, the company’s chief executive, said in an interview just before the failure that the launch in Britain had been an “expensive undertaking” because of the need to work out logistics and regulatory matters.
Operating out of Cornwall required the company to move from an established base in the Mojave Desert in California to a new one in wet and windy Europe. “The first-time nature of this mission added layers of complexity that our team professionally managed through,” Mr. Hart said in a statement after the loss of the rocket and satellites.
Virgin Orbit is relative newcomer to the satellite launch business, which is dominated by private companies like SpaceX, a 20-year-old firm owned by billionaire Elon Musk that has launched thousands of Starlink communications satellites into orbit.
Until Monday, Virgin Orbit had conducted five satellite launches — an initial failure followed by four successful ones — all from the Mojave. It said it hoped to “return to orbit” after concluding its investigation and taking “corrective actions.”
