With much fanfare, the first ever orbital launch attempt from UK soil began with the lift-off from Newquay Airport’s horizontal spaceport facility of Boeing 747-400 “Cosmic Girl”. Beneath the wing of the carrier aircraft was the Virgin Orbit LauncherOne. Cosmic Girl...
During 2022 there were 186 orbital launch attempts. This beat 2021’s record-breaking total of 146 launches (the previous record was in 1967 with 139 launches). Thanks to the 61 launches made by SpaceX’s Falcon 9/Falcon Heavy family, the US retook the lead with 78,...
While maiden flights of new rockets are known to be risky, with a failure rate of around 40 per cent according to the Seradata SpaceTrak database, second flights are considerably less so. Nevertheless, they still have a failure rate of around 19-20 per cent. And so it...
The Soyuz MS-22 sprung a coolant leak while still attached to the International Space Station (ISS) on 14 December. Soyuz MS-22, which brought a crew of three to the ISS in September, is also the crew’s means of returning home. The leak, which spewed droplets of fluid...
The Landspace commercial Zhuque-2 (ZQ-2) Liquid Methane/Liquid Oxygen (LOX) powered two-stage rocket failed on its maiden flight from the Jiuquan launch site in China. The launch took place at circa 0830 GMT on 14 December. It is believed that the first stage worked...
An Epsilon-2 Adv CLPS rocket was launched from Uchinoura, Kagoshima, Japan, at 0050 GMT on 12 October 2022, but failed to achieve orbit after its second stage was detected to have a fault during flight. When it became apparent that orbit would not be achieved, the...
