UK's first space launch of military satellites ends in failure

The UK's attempt to become the first Western European nation to put satellites into space from a base on home soil has failed after a LauncherOne rocket missed the designated orbit.

British billionaire Richard Branson's Virgin Orbit had planned to launch nine satellites from the 21-meter LauncherOne rocket attached under the wing of a modified Boeing 747 flown from a new spaceport in Newquay in Cornwall, southwest England, at 22:02 GMT on Monday.

Virgin Orbit officials announced on Tuesday that a still-unexplained anomaly had occurred during the firing of the rocket's second stage engine, ending the mission.

The two-stage rocket took off from Cornwall attached to the Boeing 747, and then detached from the aircraft and ignited as planned at a height of 35,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean to the south of Ireland at around 23:15 GMT. But in a series of tweets as the rocket was due to enter orbit and discharge its nine satellites, Virgin Orbit said, "We appear to have an anomaly that has prevented us from reaching orbit."

The rocket had nine small satellites on board, including several military and security payloads.

Among the military payloads was one program linked to the US Naval Research Lab and another linked to the British Defense Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl).

Two cereal-box sized Prometheus-2 cubesats developed by the British government at In-Space Missions Ltd, based in Hampshire, and designed with Airbus Defence and Space in collaboration with the US National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) were planned to operate in low Earth orbit, providing a test platform for imaging and monitoring radio signals, including GPS.

The two had separate equipment installed to test concepts in support of the British MoD's ISTARI program for future space-based intelligence and surveillance.

The US Navy and the Dstl were also working on a satellite in the Circe program, a coordinated ionospheric reconstruction cubesat experiment meant to have been placed in orbit on board LauncherOne. The collaborative space mission involved investigating the ionosphere, an important area of space impacting GPS, communications, and sensing technology.

A third, defense-related security satellite program on board the rocket, known as Amber 1 satellite, was designed for maritime intelligence gathering.

ME