Virgin Atlantic Cosmic Girl, a repurposed Virgin Atlantic Boeing 747 aircraft carrying a rocket, is parked at Spaceport Cornwall, at Cornwall Airport in Newquay, England, Monday, Jan. 9, 2023. (Ben Birchall/PA via AP)
Hopes were high for Virgin Orbit's LauncherOne mission slated for Monday but an anomaly prevented the rocket from launching into orbit.
In what would have been the the first-ever orbital mission launch from the UK, seemed to be going off without a hitch after Virgin Orbit's 'Cosmic Girl' jet carrier transported the LauncherOne rocket from Cornwall to a drop point located in the Atlantic Ocean outside of Ireland.
In another tweet, the company backtracked that confirmation but details into why the launch into orbit were not available.
The LauncherOne mission set out to launch nine small satellites into orbit, with at least one of them being used to conduct technology demonstration for the UK's Ministry of Defense, according to NASA Spaceflight.
British officials and space scientists said Tuesday they were disappointed but not deterred after the first attempt to launch satellites into orbit from the U.K. ended in failure.
The small coastal town of Montecito, California -- home to celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle and Rob Lowe -- has been evacuated as a result of extensive flooding in the area and surrounding canyons after more than eight inches of rain fell in just 12 hours on Monday.
Virgin Orbit's "Cosmic Girl," a retrofitted Boeing 747 plane, is scheduled for a horizontal launch into orbit Monday night from the United Kingdom's Spaceport Cornwall.
