Virgin Orbit was a company within the

Virgin Group Virgin Group Ltd is a British multinational venture capital conglomerate founded by Richard Branson and Nik Powell in February 1970. Virgin Group's date of incorporation is listed as 1989 by Companies House, who class it as a holding compa ...

that provided launch services for

small satellite A small satellite, miniaturized satellite, or smallsat is a satellite of low mass and size, usually under . While all such satellites can be referred to as "small", different classifications are used to categorize them based on mass. Satellites c ...

s. The company was formed in 2017 as a spin-off of

Richard Branson Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson (born 18 July 1950) is an English business magnate who co-founded the Virgin Group in 1970, and controlled 5 companies remaining of once more than 400. Branson expressed his desire to become an entrepreneu ...

Virgin Galactic Virgin Galactic Holdings, Inc. is a British-American spaceflight company founded by Richard Branson and the Virgin Group conglomerate, which retains an 11.9% stake through Virgin Investments Limited. It is headquartered in California, and opera ...

space tourism venture to develop and market the

LauncherOne LauncherOne was a two-stage orbital launch vehicle developed and flown by Virgin Orbit that had operational flights from 2021 to 2023, after being in development from 2007 to 2020. It was an air-launched rocket, designed to carry smallsat ...

rocket, which had previously been a project under Virgin Galactic. LauncherOne was a two-stage launch vehicle, air-launched from a

Boeing 747 The Boeing 747 is a long-range wide-body aircraft, wide-body airliner designed and manufactured by Boeing Commercial Airplanes in the United States between 1968 and 2023. After the introduction of the Boeing 707, 707 in October 1958, Pan Am ...

carrier aircraft, designed to deliver 300 kg of payload to low Earth orbit. On December 30, 2021, Virgin Orbit underwent a

SPAC SPAC primarily refers to a special-purpose acquisition company, a method of taking a company public by merging it with an already public investment company. SPAC may also refer to: * Henry Crown Sports and Aquatics Center, a sports facility at No ...

merger with NextGen Acquisition Corp, and became a publicly traded company (symbol VORB) at the

NASDAQ The Nasdaq Stock Market (; National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the U.S. by volume, and ranked second on the list ...

stock exchange. Upon listing Virgin Orbit was valued at $3.7 billion. LauncherOne made six flights from 2020 to 2023, resulting in four successes and two failures. After the second failure in January 2023 and amid an inability to secure additional financing, the company laid off staff and suspended operations in March 2023, finalizing Chapter 11 bankruptcy auction on May 22, 2023. Remaining assets were divested for $36 million, less than 1% of the company's valuation upon IPO.

Vehicles

LauncherOne

On May 25, 2020, LauncherOne's first launch failed to reach orbit. On January 17, 2021, LauncherOne became the first Virgin Orbit vehicle to reach orbit, successfully deploying 10

CubeSat A CubeSat is a class of small satellite with a form factor of cubes. CubeSats have a mass of no more than per unit,, url=https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5418c831e4b0fa4ecac1bacd/t/5f24997b6deea10cc52bb016/1596234122437/CDS+REV14+2020-07-3 ...

s into

Low Earth Orbit A low Earth orbit (LEO) is an geocentric orbit, orbit around Earth with a orbital period, period of 128 minutes or less (making at least 11.25 orbits per day) and an orbital eccentricity, eccentricity less than 0.25. Most of the artificial object ...

for

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

on its final demonstration mission. LauncherOne was deployed from the left (port) wing of a retrofitted

, 33,000 feet (10 kilometers) above the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five Borders of the oceans, oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is ...

. The rocket was dedicated to the memory of the mother of

, founder of Virgin - Eve Branson, who died from

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. In January 2020, the disease spread worldwide, resulting in the COVID-19 pandemic. The symptoms of COVID‑19 can vary but often include fever ...

on January 8, 2021. On June 30, 2021, LauncherOne successfully delivered its first commercial payload to space. On January 13, 2022, LauncherOne successfully delivered seven cubesats for three customers into orbit. On July 2, 2022, LauncherOne flew a successful mission. On January 9, 2023, LauncherOne failed to orbit despite a nominal drop from the aircraft, with Virgin Orbit citing "an anomaly" with the upper stage. The failed payload included nine satellites from seven different customers. This was Virgin Orbit's first attempted launch from the UK at Spaceport Cornwall; previous launches were from

Mojave Air and Space Port The Mojave Air and Space Port at Rutan Field is in Mojave, California, United States, at an elevation of . It is the first facility to be licensed in the United States for horizontal launches of reusable spacecraft, being certified as a s ...

''Cosmic Girl''

''Cosmic Girl'' was the name of the modified

Boeing 747-400 The Boeing 747-400 is a large, long-range wide-body airliner produced by Boeing Commercial Airplanes, an advanced variant of the initial Boeing 747. The ''Advanced Series 300'' was announced at the September 1984 Farnborough Airshow, target ...

that Virgin Orbit used to launch its rockets. In 2022, Virgin Orbit announced plans to acquire additional 747s with the ability to transport the rocket and ground support equipment internally.

Operations and financials

Based in

Long Beach, California Long Beach is a coastal city in southeastern Los Angeles County, California, United States. It is the list of United States cities by population, 44th-most populous city in the United States, with a population of 451,307 as of 2022. A charter ci ...

, at its founding in 2017, Virgin Orbit had more than 300 employees led by president Dan Hart, a former

vice president A vice president or vice-president, also director in British English, is an officer in government or business who is below the president (chief executive officer) in rank. It can also refer to executive vice presidents, signifying that the vi ...

of government satellite systems at

Boeing The Boeing Company, or simply Boeing (), is an American multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and sells airplanes, rotorcraft, rockets, satellites, and missiles worldwide. The company also provides leasing and product support s ...

. The company from which it was spun off,

, continued to focus on two other capabilities: human suborbital spaceflight operations and advanced aerospace design, manufacturing, and testing. In October 2019, Virgin Orbit announced that Matthew Stannard was joining as a pilot on a three-year contract. Stannard had previously served in the

Royal Air Force The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the Air force, air and space force of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. It was formed towards the end of the World War I, First World War on 1 April 1918, on the merger of t ...

as a test and evaluation pilot notably on

Typhoon A typhoon is a tropical cyclone that develops between 180° and 100°E in the Northern Hemisphere and which produces sustained hurricane-force winds of at least . This region is referred to as the Northwestern Pacific Basin, accounting for a ...

jets. At that time Orbit was about to start testing its ''Cosmic Girl'' launch platform.Virgin Orbit selects RAF pilot as it plans satellite launch program
Ed Adamczyk, SpaceDaily, 2019-10-04 A few months prior to going public, Virgin Orbit was owned by Richard Branson's Virgin Group and the Emirati state-owned Mubadala, which had invested about $1 billion in Virgin Orbit through August 2021. In August 2021 when the SPAC merger was announced, Virgin Orbit estimated it needed $420 million in cash, starting in the second half of 2021, to reach positive cash flow in 2024. When it went public in December 2021, after completing its SPAC merger, the company raised $228 million, less than half than the $483 million it expected to raise. Virgin Orbit held an "opening bell" ceremony at Nasdaq on January 7, 2022, to celebrate going public; it opened at $10 per share. When the SPAC merger was announced in August 2021, Virgin Orbit aimed to be profitable on an

EBITDA A company's earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (commonly abbreviated EBITDA, pronounced ) is a measure of a company's profitability of the operating business only, thus before any effects of indebtedness, state-mandat ...

-basis by end of Q4 2024. The company said it had about $300 million in active contracts, and expected its rocket launch business to grow to about 18 launches in 2023. The company expected to have about $15 million in revenue in 2021, with an EBITDA loss of $156 million; however, it aimed at further revenue growth, reaching $2.1 billion in revenue by 2026. The company's third-quarter financial report, issued in November 2022, showed cash on hand of $71.2 million, $30.9 million in revenue, and an adjusted

loss of $42.9 million for the period. The company's backlog of binding contracts fell by 12%, to $143 million, compared to the end of the prior quarter, and forecast that it would only have three launches in 2022, compared to a forecast of four to six, made earlier in 2022.

Bankruptcy and dissolution

On March 16, 2023, Virgin Orbit announced a pausing of operations and

furlough A furlough (; from , "leave of absence") is a temporary cessation of paid employment that is intended to address the special needs of a company or employer; these needs may be due to economic conditions that affect a specific employer, or to thos ...

ing of nearly its entire staff, while seeking additional funding. Causes for the event are cited as both capital management and technical. Virgin Orbit recorded a loss of US$139.5 million for the first nine months of 2022. Matthew Brown Companies, a Texas and Hawaii based venture capital firm led by Dallas-based Matthew Brown, a businessman, made a $200 million tender for the company but ultimately fell through. The parties resolved their civil litigation in March 2024. As part of the settlement, Brown was awarded $10 million from Virgin's Directors and Officers (D&O) insurance policy. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) settled and made no allegations of fraud against Brown. Board members had approved

golden parachute A golden parachute is an agreement between a company and an employee (usually an upper executive) specifying that the employee will receive certain significant benefits if employment is terminated. These may include severance pay, cash bonuses, ...

plans for executives previously. The company declared

Chapter 11 bankruptcy Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code ( Title 11 of the United States Code) permits reorganization under the bankruptcy laws of the United States. Such reorganization, known as Chapter 11 bankruptcy, is available to every business, w ...

on April 4, 2023. Assets were divested to three major bidders in May 2023:

Rocket Lab Rocket Lab Corporation is a Public company, publicly traded aerospace manufacturer and List of launch service providers, launch service provider. Its Rocket Lab Electron, Electron orbital rocket launches Small satellite, small satellites, and ha ...

acquired the company's

Long Beach Long Beach is a coastal city in southeastern Los Angeles County, California, United States. It is the list of United States cities by population, 44th-most populous city in the United States, with a population of 451,307 as of 2022. A charter ci ...

facility, manufacturing and tooling assets for $16 million, Launcher purchased the company's Mojave test site for $3 million, and the ''Cosmic Girl'' aircraft was sold to Stratolaunch Systems for $17 million. An additional $3.8 million in assets were sold to

Firefly Aerospace Firefly Aerospace, Inc. is an American private aerospace firm based in Cedar Park, Texas, that develops small- and medium-lift launch vehicles for commercial launches to orbit. The current company was formed when the assets of the former co ...

on June 15. Virgin Orbit intellectual property is for sale.

VOX Space

VOX Space was a subsidiary of Virgin Orbit that was created in 2020. The company supplied launch services for the

US military The United States Armed Forces are the military forces of the United States. U.S. federal law names six armed forces: the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, Space Force, and the Coast Guard. Since 1949, all of the armed forces, except th ...

, sometimes referred to as the "

national security National security, or national defence (national defense in American English), is the security and Defence (military), defence of a sovereign state, including its Citizenship, citizens, economy, and institutions, which is regarded as a duty of ...

launch market". The company used the Virgin Orbit

launch vehicle A launch vehicle is typically a rocket-powered vehicle designed to carry a payload (a crewed spacecraft or satellites) from Earth's surface or lower atmosphere to outer space. The most common form is the ballistic missile-shaped multistage ...

. The president as of July 2022 was Mark Baird, who took over on August 17, 2021. In April 2020, VOX Space was awarded a contract for three launches of 44

cubesat A CubeSat is a class of small satellite with a form factor of cubes. CubeSats have a mass of no more than per unit,, url=https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5418c831e4b0fa4ecac1bacd/t/5f24997b6deea10cc52bb016/1596234122437/CDS+REV14+2020-07-3 ...

s for US Space Force. The first of these launches succeeded on July 2, 2022.

Other projects

Ventilators

In response to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

in early 2020, Virgin Orbit announced it was a partner with the

University of California Irvine The University of California, Irvine (UCI or UC Irvine) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Irvine, California, United States. One of the ten campuses of the University of California system, U ...

and the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public university, public research university in Austin, Texas, United States. Founded in 1883, it is the flagship institution of the University of Texas System. With 53,082 stud ...

in a new venture to build simplified

mechanical ventilator A ventilator is a type of breathing apparatus, a class of health technology, medical technology that provides mechanical ventilation by moving breathable air into and out of the lungs, to deliver breaths to a patient who is physically unable to ...

s — specifically "bridge ventilators" for partially recovered patients and patients not in

intensive care Intensive care medicine, usually called critical care medicine, is a medical specialty that deals with seriously or critically ill patients who have, are at risk of, or are recovering from conditions that may be life-threatening. It includes p ...

— to address the critical global shortage of ventilators."Virgin Orbit designs new ventilator as part of Virgin Group's efforts to combat coronavirus,"
March, 2020,

Space.com Space.com is an online publication focused on outer space, space exploration, astronomy, skywatching and entertainment, with editorial teams based in the United States and United Kingdom. Launched on July 20, 1999, the website offers live coverag ...

, retrieved April 2, 2020"Branson's Virgin Orbit to begin coronavirus ventilator mass production,"
March 30, 2020, ''

NBC News NBC News is the news division of the American broadcast television network NBC. The division operates under NBCUniversal Media Group, a division of NBCUniversal, which is itself a subsidiary of Comcast. The news division's various operations r ...

,'' retrieved April 2, 2020. They were granted an emergency use authorization by the US

Food and Drug Administration The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA or US FDA) is a List of United States federal agencies, federal agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Health and Human Services. The FDA is respo ...

(FDA) in April 2020.

Launch site in the UK

Virgin Orbit agreed to launch space flights from Spaceport Cornwall in a project partly funded by the

UK Space Agency The United Kingdom Space Agency (UKSA) is an executive agency of the Government of the United Kingdom, responsible for the United Kingdom's British space programme, civil space programme. It was established on 1 April 2010 to replace the Britis ...

. Virgin Orbit's first and only UK launch took place on January 9, 2023. The rocket failed to reach orbit.

Launch site in Brazil

In April 2021, the

Brazilian Space Agency The Brazilian Space Agency (; AEB) is the civilian authority in Brazil responsible for the country's Space exploration, space program. It operates a spaceport at Centro de Lançamento de Alcântara, Alcântara, and a rocket launch site at Centro ...

disclosed the company among those selected to operate orbital launches from the Alcantara Launch Center in

Brazil Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...

. On June 27, 2022, Virgin Orbit announced a Brazil-based subsidiary, Virgin Orbit Brasil Ltda, to facilitate launches from the Alcantara Launch Center. The Brazil-based launch center is just two degrees south of the

Equator The equator is the circle of latitude that divides Earth into the Northern Hemisphere, Northern and Southern Hemisphere, Southern Hemispheres of Earth, hemispheres. It is an imaginary line located at 0 degrees latitude, about in circumferen ...

, allowing launches to almost every

orbital inclination Orbital inclination measures the tilt of an object's orbit around a celestial body. It is expressed as the angle between a reference plane and the orbital plane or axis of direction of the orbiting object. For a satellite orbiting the Earth ...

. In the end, no launches from Brazilia took place.

Launch site in Australia

In September 2022, Virgin Orbit signed an agreement with Wagner Corporation to base a 747-400 launch aircraft at Toowoomba Wellcamp Airport in

Queensland Queensland ( , commonly abbreviated as Qld) is a States and territories of Australia, state in northeastern Australia, and is the second-largest and third-most populous state in Australia. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Austr ...

with a demonstrator launch planned for 2024. In the end, no launches from Australia were performed.

Mission to Mars

Virgin Orbit considered a mission to

Mars Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun. It is also known as the "Red Planet", because of its orange-red appearance. Mars is a desert-like rocky planet with a tenuous carbon dioxide () atmosphere. At the average surface level the atmosph ...

in 2022. In the end, Virgin Orbit did not perform any interplanetary missions; especially the Mars mission did not happen.

References

External links

* {{Virgin Galactic Aerospace companies of the United States Private spaceflight companies Commercial launch service providers Virgin Galactic Technology companies based in Greater Los Angeles Companies based in Long Beach, California Technology companies established in 2017 Technology companies disestablished in 2023 American companies established in 2017 American companies disestablished in 2023 Aabar Investments Companies that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2023 Companies that have filed for bankruptcy in the United States Defunct spaceflight companies 2017 establishments in California 2023 disestablishments in California