LOS ANGELES – Virgin Orbit engineers were analyzing data Tuesday to find out what caused the maiden flight of its air-launched satellite booster to fail.
The problem occurred soon after the LauncherOne rocket was released Monday from a Boeing 747 jetliner off the Southern California coast and its first stage motor ignited.
The launch was not terminated by the autonomous flight safety system, which would have been triggered if the rocket left its flight corridor, said Kendall Russell, Virgin Orbit’s spokesman. “So the engineers are diving into the data now to determine the source of the anomaly,” he said in an email.
The payload for the demonstration flight was essentially a dummy satellite that was supposed to be placed in low Earth orbit.
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