The United Kingdom is among the space powers

Historic turning point for the UK: The new space race is underway. With the first launch of miniature satellites into orbit directly from British soil. According to the British newspaper The Guardian, In mid-November, a huge Virgin Orbit airliner (the company of businessman Richard Branson) It will take off from the spaceport in CornwallCarrying a missile mounted under a wing. When the plane flies over the Atlantic Ocean at an altitude of 10,668 meters, the rocket engine itself will be activated and a payload of small satellites will be launched into Earth’s orbit.

LauncherOne opens the season of UK launches

The mission initially, called LauncherOne, will pave the way for a season of launches that will take place directly from the UK: The goal is to take off from the spaceport in Cornwall, Newquay, up to eight Virgin Orbit flights per year.

Most launches from British soil will involve small satellites weighing less than 500 kilograms. He told the Guardian that devices “ranging from shoebox-sized satellites to washing machine-sized ones”. Ian Annette, number two in the British Space Agency.

Among the precision instruments introduced into orbit during the LauncherOne mission are Prometheus-2, a Department of Defense satellite; Dover, British navigational satellite; and ForgeStar-0, an exploratory mission to produce pharmaceuticals, alloys, and microelectronics in space.

The UK has reopened its doors to space after 50 years

The mission departing from the Cornish Spaceport has only one British “ancestor”.: The experimental Prospero probe was launched into space by a Black Arrow rocket in 1971. This is the only British satellite to be put into orbit. However, it did not take off on British soil: the launch took place in Woomera in Australia.

“Britain has become very good at developing and building small satellites, but to put them into orbit we had to take them to Russia, India or the United States,” he said. Jon Buffett from the management team at Spaceport Cornwall, in an interview with The Guardian: “This is expensive, wasteful to the environment and often leads to delays. Now we can control the entire process, from the layout of the probe to its introduction into space.”

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