The launch of the first space rocket from Western Europe – the "Cosmic Girl," a converted Boeing 747 – failed on Monday night, announced the space company Virgin Orbit, owned by British billionaire Richard Branson.
At 23:16 Belgian time, a Boeing 747 with a rocket at the bottom took off from Cornwall airport in the far southwest of England to put nine small satellites into orbit, and while the LauncherOne reached space, it fell short of orbit, the company announced.
"At some point during the firing of the rocket's second stage engine and with the rocket travelling at the speed of more than 11,000 miles per hour, the system experienced an anomaly, ending the mission prematurely," reads a statement posted to Twitter.
In practice, this means that the rocket was supposed to put nine satellites into orbit, but it did not reach the required altitude to do so. What happened to the cargo of satellites is still unclear; Cosmic Girl returned with the crew to the airport in Cornwall without any problems.
This was the first launch of satellites from British soil, and the first time satellites from Western Europe would be put into orbit. Usually, well-known launch bases such as Cape Canaveral (United States), Baikonur (Kazakhstan) or Kourou (French Guiana) are used for this purpose.
