Virgin Orbit Stops Working
March 31., Virgin Orbit, the satellite launcher founded by British billionaire Richard Branson, will go out of business “for the foreseeable future” due to lack of funding. This was reported by CNBC, citing an audio recording of a speech by CEO Dan Hart on Thursday at a company meeting.
“We have no choice but to make immediate, dramatic and extremely painful changes,” he said.
The company intends to lay off 90% of employees, leaving only one hundred people. According to Hart, anyone who loses a job can count on payments and benefits».
Virgin Orbit’s first-ever launch of space satellites from the UK ended in failure in January when the second-stage engine of the LauncherOne rocket failed. The first stage engine fired four seconds after reset and ran for the prescribed three minutes before the first stage separated. Subsequently, the second stage of the rocket, which lifts the payload into low-Earth orbit (about 550 km), was supposed to detach, but this did not happen.
