Possible visibility of Virgin Orbit launch from the UK on January 9th

[Nick James]

There is a video from a fireball camera in Lanzarote which shows a bright and slow fireball northwest of the Canaries at 23:18:50.

https://twitter.com/RedSpmn/status/1612727698048311297

Drop time was 23:09 so this is around 600s downrange. Virgin Orbit stated that the vehicle reached 4.9 km/s which is a long way short of orbital velocity but fast enough to ablate on re-entry so this is consistent with re-entry of the second stage and payload.

If anyone else has contacts in the Canaries please ask if they saw anything.

As Grant says, putting stuff in orbit is still hard. Falcon 9 makes it look easy but Space-X has had a lot of practice.

[David Strange]

This is my only record of anything moving through the field of view of a 28mm lens with 30s exp.
No rocket plume but a solitary aircraft at azimuth 239deg altitude 20deg at 23:18hr last night.
An unhappy Cosmic Girl returning to Newquay perhaps!? Imaged from East Devon.

David

Attachments:

1. 

   LookingforLauncherOne_20230109_dgs.jpg
   

[Dr Paul Leyland]

I saw nothing from here in the Canaries, neither did one of my contacts also in La Palma.

[Author]

Posts