The company's third-quarter financial report, issued in November 2022, showed cash on hand of $71.2 million, $30.9 million in revenue, and an adjusted EBITDA loss of $42.9 million for the period. The company expected to have about $15 million in revenue in 2021, with an EBITDA loss of $156 million however, it aimed at further revenue growth, reaching $2.1 billion in revenue by 2026. The company said it had about $300 million in active contracts, and expected its rocket launch business to grow to about 18 launches in 2023. When the SPAC merger was announced in August 2021, Virgin Orbit aimed to be profitable on an EBITDA-basis by end of Q4 2024. Virgin Orbit held an "opening bell" ceremony at Nasdaq on Januto celebrate going public it opened at $10 per share. When it went public in December 2021, after completing its SPAC merger, the company raised $228 million, less than half than the $483 million it expected to raise. In August 2021 when the SPAC merger was announced, Virgin Orbit estimated it needed $420 million in cash, starting in the second half of 2021, to reach positive cash flow in 2024. Ī few months prior to going public, Virgin Orbit was owned by Richard Branson's Virgin Group and the Emirati state-owned Mubadala, which had invested about $1 billion in Virgin Orbit through August 2021. At that time Orbit was about to start testing its Cosmic Girl launch platform. Stannard had previously served in the Royal Air Force as a test and evaluation pilot notably on Typhoon jets. In October 2019, Virgin Orbit announced that Matthew Stannard was joining as a pilot on a three-year contract. The company from which it was spun off, Virgin Galactic, continued to focus on two other capabilities: human suborbital spaceflight operations and advanced aerospace design, manufacturing, and testing. Operations and financials īased in Long Beach, California, at its founding in 2017, Virgin Orbit had more than 300 employees led by president Dan Hart, a former vice president of government satellite systems at Boeing. In 2022, Virgin Orbit announced plans to acquire additional 747s with the ability to transport the rocket and ground support equipment internally. This was Virgin Orbit's first attempted launch from the UK at Spaceport Cornwall previous launches were from Mojave Air and Space Port.Ĭosmic Girl was the name of the modified Boeing 747-400 that Virgin Orbit used to launch its rockets. The failed payload included nine satellites from seven different customers. On January 9, 2023, LauncherOne failed to orbit despite a nominal drop from the aircraft, with Virgin Orbit citing "an anomaly" with the upper stage. On July 2, 2022, LauncherOne flew a successful mission. On January 13, 2022, LauncherOne successfully delivered seven cubesats for three customers into orbit. On June 30, 2021, LauncherOne successfully delivered its first commercial payload to space. The rocket was dedicated to the memory of the mother of Richard Branson, founder of Virgin - Eve Branson, who died from COVID-19 on January 8, 2021. LauncherOne was deployed from the left (port) wing of a retrofitted Boeing 747, 33,000 feet (10 kilometers) above the Pacific Ocean. On January 17, 2021, LauncherOne became the first Virgin Orbit vehicle to reach orbit, successfully deploying 10 CubeSats into Low Earth Orbit for NASA on its final demonstration mission. On May 25, 2020, LauncherOne's first launch failed to reach orbit. The company's remaining assets were sold off to various aerospace companies for a total of $36 million, less than 1% of the company's valuation upon IPO. After the second failure, in January 2023, and an inability to secure additional financing, the company laid off 675 people, or approximately 85% of the staff and suspended operations in March 2023, finalizing Chapter 11 bankruptcy auction on May 22, 2023. LauncherOne made six flights from 2020 to 2023, resulting in four successes and two failures. At the SPAC merger Virgin Orbit was valued at $3.7 billion in equity. On December 30, 2021, Virgin Orbit underwent a SPAC merger with NextGen Acquisition Corp, and became a publicly traded company (symbol VORB) at the NASDAQ stock exchange. LauncherOne was an air-launched two-stage launch vehicle designed to deliver 300 kg of payload to low Earth orbit. The company was formed in 2017 as a spin-off of Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic space tourism venture to develop and market the LauncherOne rocket, which had previously been a project under Virgin Galactic. Virgin Orbit was a company within the Virgin Group that provided launch services for small satellites.
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