Britain is poised to become a major space power in the coming weeks with the anticipated launch of Virgin Orbit jumbo jet. The space craft is expected to take off from an airport in Cornwall, “carrying a rocket strapped below one wing.”
“As the plane flies 35,000ft above the Atlantic, it will drop its cargo, the rocket engine will be ignited, and a payload of small satellites will be hurled into Earth orbit,” The Guardian’s Science Editor Robin McKie reports.
“Up to eight Virgin Orbit flights a year will eventually take off from Spaceport Cornwall, in Newquay, it is hoped – while rockets lifting off from mainland Scotland and Shetland will also carry satellites into space in the near future,” he added.
According to John Paffett of the Spaceport Cornwall management team, “Britain has become very good at developing and building small satellites, but to put them into orbit, he says, they have had to take them to Russia or India or the US.” “That is expensive, environmentally wasteful and often leads to delays. Now we can take control of the whole operation – from planning a probe to putting it into space,” he said.
Instructively, “only one UK satellite has ever been put into orbit on a British launcher.” The experimental probe Prospero, as Robin notes, was blasted into space on a Black Arrow rocket in 1971 – but from Woomera in Australia. “Now that dearth is to be overturned with the creation of a satellite launch industry that the government hopes will be worth £3.8bn to the UK economy over the next decade.”
Most of the launches, The Kenya Times understands, from the UK soil will involve small satellites of not more than 500kg. “That usually translates into devices that range from shoebox-sized satellites to those with the dimensions of a washing machine, and they are now used widely across the world,” said Ian Annett, deputy CEO of the UK Space Agency.
