BRITISHSATELLITEFAIL

Recently Virgin Orbit sent out a starlight by plane, but the mission failed due to an anomaly; so, what actually went wrong? That’s what I’m aiming to answer today.

Picture this, your pilot Mathew Stannard (no relation) flying Virgin Orbit’s Cosmic Girl (Cosmic Girl is a bit of an odd name, sounds like a K-pop band) After launching your first rocket, an error comes with it, and it flies off to who knows where.

We know that the error was a secondary thruster but why did it fail? A secondary thruster does not just fail for no reason. This leaves some pressing questions. Where did Launcher 1 (the rocket that was launched off the plane) end up? How does Mathew feel about his mission failing? All of which will be answered today.

WHERE IS LAUNCHER 1?

Virgin are making no effort to find Launcher 1 - but I am Around the same time a fireball was spotted on the West Coast of Africa. This is widely believed to be Launcher 1.

The it was found somewhere in the circled area here

WHAT WAS THE ERROR?

So, the error was apparently a failure in the Secondary Engine, which cause Launcher 1 to fly but not exit the Earth’s atmosphere.

WILL THERE BE A RELAUNCH?

Yes, it will be later this year and I will be updating you all about it.

HOW DID THE COVERAGE GO? CONCLUSION

By coverage I mean how it was available to the public eye (e g livestreams) For people who were in Cottingham had amazing coverage, the people watching the livestreams, not so much The stream was horrible quality you could barely see what was happening and to top it off there was talking in the background. This has made Virgin very unpopular compared to NASA and SpaceX.

Written by Ethan Year 6

That concludes my coverage of the British satellite fail. I hope you enjoyed it and I have hooked you in, to continue reading to the next article