Virgin Orbit's Sixth Launch Became a 'Fireball' on Monday (gizmodo.com) 12
It was meant to be the first-ever orbital mission to take off from the United Kingdom — carried by a Virgin Orbit rocket launched from a private jumbo jet Monday over the Atlantic ocean, according to the BBC.
But instead "at an altitude of approximately 180km (111 miles), the upper stage experienced an anomaly which 'prematurely ended' the first burn. The company said this event ended the mission, with the rocket components and payload falling back to Earth within the approved safety corridor.,,,"
At this point the unmanned rocket became "a slow moving fireball in the sky," astrodynamics lecturer Marco Langbroek told Gizmodo in an email. The rocket's hellish descent was captured on video, revealing the unfortunate journey back from space. Ramón López, an observer at the Spanish Meteor Network, caught the rocket reentering Earth's atmosphere from Lanzarote, one of the Canary Islands off the west coast of Africa. He released the footage on YouTube, as well as on Twitter.
Earlier this week Space.com noted that four previous Virgin Orbit missions have all been successful, deploying a total of 33 satellites into orbit.
But instead "at an altitude of approximately 180km (111 miles), the upper stage experienced an anomaly which 'prematurely ended' the first burn. The company said this event ended the mission, with the rocket components and payload falling back to Earth within the approved safety corridor.,,,"
At this point the unmanned rocket became "a slow moving fireball in the sky," astrodynamics lecturer Marco Langbroek told Gizmodo in an email. The rocket's hellish descent was captured on video, revealing the unfortunate journey back from space. Ramón López, an observer at the Spanish Meteor Network, caught the rocket reentering Earth's atmosphere from Lanzarote, one of the Canary Islands off the west coast of Africa. He released the footage on YouTube, as well as on Twitter.
Earlier this week Space.com noted that four previous Virgin Orbit missions have all been successful, deploying a total of 33 satellites into orbit.
Its now saturday (Score:3)
and /, is reporting an event that happened on monday...
Re: (Score:2)
...by linking to a Gizmodo article from Wednesday.
But don't worry, all your Slashvertisements for the week have arrived without delay!
Eh, not what Slashdot is for (Score:3)
If you want a 15-minute news cycle (with things that may or may not be true, in varying degrees), read Fox News or CNN.
If you want a 24-48 hour news cycle with things that are mostly true but dumbed down, read ABC News.
If you want sometimes intelligent analysis of the nerdy news of the week (and BS headlines), read Slashdot.
Slashdot isn't about whatever happened in the 20 minutes. It's about discussing the news of the week, or recent weeks, with fellow nerds.
Re: (Score:2)
"Slashdot isn't about whatever happened in the 20 minutes."...unless it's crypto. I believe that Slashdot scooped MSM by a few days a time or two. F'rinstance in the time it takes to mine a token I went from zero knowledge of FTX to explaining it to friends and family when it later popped up on the nightly news.
Oh, and video games. Other stuff that matters.
Hopefully it all vapourised (Score:3)
And didn't become more polluting junk at the bottom of the sea.
Re: (Score:3)
So it's preferable for it to become more polluting junk in your lungs?
Yeah... "anomaly" (Score:3)
Five days later, "anomaly" has become "fireball". Progress of a kind (towards honesty).
Re: (Score:3)
anomaly
n noun (plural anomalies)
1 something that deviates from what is standard, normal, or expected.
2 Astronomy the angular distance of a planet or satellite from its last perihelion or perigee.
DERIVATIVES
anomalous noun
anomalously adverb
anomalousness noun
ORIGIN
C16: via Latin from Greek anomalia, from anomalos (from an- + homalos 'even') + -y3.
Concise Oxford English Dictionary
Re: (Score:2)
Branson's Response (Score:3)
When asked about it, Richard Branson responded with "Hadouken!".
Re: (Score:2)
When asked about it, Richard Branson responded with "Hadouken!".
Well, the fireball happened in the second stage, so after the sonic boom. Guile wins again.
So how fine-grained do we go for "firsts"? (Score:2)
Maybe I'm just being tired and grumpy this morning. But, as TFS notes, Virgin has put things successfully into orbit before - so this would just have been "the first" from UK. Is that actually a big deal? Does it really matter where an already-established company is launching from, if you're not a politician trying to get re-elected by saying "look at the money I brought to your area"? In the future, are we really going to care about "first launches" from Yorkshire or Essex or wherever the heck Virgin (or S