Virgin Orbit has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after it failed to secure more funding. The announcement comes just days after the firm laid off 85% of its workforce or 675 employees.
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Virgin Orbit is laying off 85% of its workforce after it was unable to secure funding. This means 675 people will lose their jobs. The redundancies will likely be completed by April 3.
With Christmas and New Year out of the way, rocket launches are starting to get back into full swing. Notably this week, Virgin Orbit will be launching from Cornwall in the UK this week.
This week, Rocket Lab will reattempt to launch NASA's CAPSTONE mission and there's a slim possibility we could see the first launch of SpaceX's Super Heavy rocket carrying Starship.
Next week is set to be another quiet week in rocket launches. SpaceX will launch more Starlink satellites and ULA will launch some military surveillance satellites for the U.S. Space Force.
We're expecting two launches this week, one from Virgin Orbit and the other from SpaceX. Roscosmos chief, Dmitry Rogozin, has also confirmed that the city of Baikonur and the cosmodrome are secure.
In the upcoming week, we'll be getting several satellite launches. Among them will be the launch of two new Galileo satellites and 53 Starlink satellites. There are no manned missions this week.
We're heading into a quiet week for rocket launches but some long-delayed missions could finally get the break they need and get into orbit. One of the missions will see Virgin Orbit do an air launch.
There are several launches planned for this week including a Falcon 9 which will be helping a Dragon capsule into orbit so that it can deliver cargo to the International space station.
Following a clean release and ignition of LauncherOne's engines, an anomaly in the early stages of flight caused Virgin Orbit to terminate the first end-to-end flight of its orbital payload.
