Shipment of rockets from the United Kingdom through the company of billionaire Richard Branson failed

Not content with winning the multi-billion dollar space race, Richard Branson wants to conquer Earth orbit and make it his own. The Virgin founder plans to carry out his first space tourism mission from the US later this year.

But those aspirations suffered dealt a heavy blow on Monday night when Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne rocketwho had traveled in a specially adapted 747 jumbo jet which took off from the Newquay site, it failed to reach orbit and was eventually lost.

This is one of the few times that Branson’s Virgin Orbit space companies have suffered a failed launch. The Virgin Orbit company has not been able to put its customers’ telecommunications satellites into orbit. With this, the aspiration to place the United Kingdom in the space race has also been frustrated.

The firm’s mission was to put communications satellites into orbit. To do this, a Boieng 747 plane took off from the Cornwall space base, in the southwest of the United Kingdom. This carried a rocket on its wing that would later be in charge of launching the satellites. The flight of the aircraft and the uncoupling of the propulsion vehicle were successful.

Subsequently, the rocket began its journey independently. Nevertheless, ended up failing in the second phase of its flight, confirming the failure of the operation. “The system suffered an anomaly, which caused the premature end of the mission,” Virgin Orbit has detailed in a statement.

MailOnline’s analysis reveals that the Virgin owner lags behind his billionaire rivals Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos when it comes to launch success rate percentage.

Virgin clocks in at 91.35 percent, while Musk’s SpaceX has posted an impressive 97.1 percent and Bezos a more than respectable 95.65 percent. NASA no longer does its own launches, relying instead on Russia and now private companies like SpaceX following the retirement of the space shuttle in 2011. But for comparison, that program had a 98.51 percent launch success rate. hundred.

For the purposes of this analysis, a launch was considered a failure if it failed to achieve its primary objective, there was a serious malfunction, or the rocket or spacecraft was lost.

Branson’s most catastrophic and high-profile space launch failure occurred in 2014, when Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo crashed in California’s Mojave Desert, killing co-pilot Michael Alsbury and seriously injuring pilot Peter Siebold.

The craft was flying a manned test when it broke apart. Investigators later concluded that the crash was caused by structural failure after Alsbury unlocked a braking system prematurely. Branson said at the time that he was “shocked and saddened” by the “tragic loss.” (YO)