LauncherOne has suffered an “anomaly” and has failed to reach orbit – after being blasted into space in an historic launch from UK soil.
Carrying nine satellites for deployment in Earth’s lower orbit, LauncherOne shot off towards the stars from around 35,000ft above the Atlantic, having been carried skyward by a converted jumbo jet dubbed Cosmic Girl.
But shortly afterwards, Virgin Orbit, the operator of the launch, said: “We appear to have an anomaly that has prevented us from reaching orbit. We are evaluating the information.”
UK’s historic space launch – live updates
The former Virgin Atlantic Boeing 747 took off from Spaceport Cornwall, at the site of Newquay Airport, at just gone 10pm on Monday night, sparking wild cheers and applause from the 2,000 members of the public who were lucky enough to snag tickets.
Sky News’s science correspondent Thomas Moore said that although the rocket did seem to reach space successfully, “it does seem that at the last moment, the actual deployment of the satellites hasn’t worked”.
Cosmic Girl has since successfully landed back here at Spaceport Cornwall.
It set off from Newquay shortly after 10pm, and reached the drop point for LauncherOne – the rocket it was carrying – at just before 11.15pm.
The plane touched down back on the southwest coast of England less than two hours after its departure.
Despite news of LauncherOne running into problems, the aircraft was greeted by raucous applause by the hundreds of members of the public watching at the spaceport.