Virgin Orbit’s first orbital launch from UK soil, which was supposed to be a major milestone for the company and the region, ended in failure due to an internal component costing about $100, according to SpaceNews and Engadget.
Dan Hart, CEO of Virgin Orbit, revealed at a SmallSat symposium in Mountain View, California, that the evidence so far indicates that part of the rocket’s second-stage engine filter has shifted and caused problems.
The company launched its historic “Start Me Up” mission from Spaceport Cornwall on January 9, and things seemed to be going well at first. Virgin’s LauncherOne rocket successfully separated from its aircraft carrier, and the company reported a successful phased separation, but it soon became apparent that the rocket had failed to reach orbit as planned.
“The upper part of the rocket suffered an anomaly and prematurely terminated the first upper stage burn,” a company spokesperson told Engadget at the time. And they added: “This event completed the mission, with the missile components and payload returning to Earth within the approved safety corridor without ever reaching orbit.”
The mission’s LauncherOne rocket was carrying satellites for seven customers, including government agencies, and one of its payloads was a joint project between the UK’s Defense Science and Technology Laboratory and the US Naval Research Laboratory called CIRCE (CubeSat Coordinated Ion Reconstruction Experiment). Virgin Orbit promised a full investigation into the root cause of the anomaly, but didn’t wait for results to come back before announcing it would attempt a new UK launch later this year.
Hart said during the event that the company had not completed its investigation, but was confident enough to reveal the investigators’ conclusions: “Everything points, at the moment, to a candidate who was clearly present when we assembled the missile, but he was not.
That’s when the second stage engine kicked in, which means it shifted and caused damage downstream,” he said. “It’s like the $100 part that took us out.” Hart also said that Virgin Orbit will no longer use this filter and is currently looking into possible fixes.