Virgin Orbit he tried to achieve something that had never been achieved before by trying to launch the first space rocket from the continent of Europe into orbit. Only a dozen countries have the capacity to put devices into orbit from their own territories.

First space launch great Britain It failed after engineers detected that the rocket had an “anomaly” that would not allow the satellite to be put into orbit.

Through its Twitter profile, the company Virgin Orbit He communicated: “It appears we have an anomaly preventing us from reaching orbit. We are currently evaluating the information.” Also that the team “has returned safely to the Cornwall station” and that he will share details about everything that happened later.

The mission departs from the coastal town of Newquay, in southwest England. To put the rocket into orbit, a modified Boeing 747 was used which allowed it to transport the device under one of its wings. LauncherOne. “The launch encountered an anomaly that will prevent us from entering orbit for this mission,” said the director of systems engineering and verification. Virgin Orbit during the live broadcast of the event.

Archer Mattdirector of Commercial Space for the UK Space Agency, explained that the first stage of the launch was “a success”, and went “as expected”, while the second had “some sort of anomaly”, “we don’t know what happened, there will be an investigation in the next few days forward to finish it, but the rocket will not reach the height needed to launch the satellite.”

“We don’t know what happened,” said Matt Archer

This launch has created great expectations in great Britainso much so that thousands of people have moved to cornwallin southwest England, to witness the moment of takeoff.

This failure dealt a new blow to Europe’s space ambitions after the mission from Vega-C rocketmade in Italy, failed after taking off in French Guiana, on the American continent in late December with two Earth observation satellites Airbus.