Virgin Orbit: Branson's rocket firm permanently ceases operations

British billionaire Sir Richard Branson's rocket institution Virgin Orbit has permanently ceased operations, conscionable months aft a large ngo failure.

The institution sold its assets for $36m (£29m), conscionable 1% of the $3.7bn valuation up of its Nasdaq debut past year.

In March, Virgin Orbit said it would chopped 85% of its workforce aft failing to unafraid caller investment.

The California-based steadfast filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy extortion successful the US successful aboriginal April.

It came conscionable weeks aft the institution paused operations successful an evident effort to enactment up its finances.

Earlier this year, a Virgin Orbit rocket failed to implicit the archetypal ever outer motorboat from UK soil.

Virgin Orbit's office rocket mill and instrumentality were bought by rival steadfast start-up Rocket Lab for $16.1m.

Its converted Boeing 747 jet, called Cosmic Girl, was sold for $17m to aerospace steadfast Stratolaunch.

Another abstraction company, Launcher Inc, bought Virgin Orbit's motorboat tract and lease successful the Mojave godforsaken for $2.7m.

Virgin Orbit, which was founded successful 2017, ne'er turned a nett arsenic a nationalist company.

It developed rockets to transportation tiny satellites and is portion of Sir Richard's concern empire, which includes hose Virgin Atlantic and abstraction tourism institution Virgin Galactic.

The company's LauncherOne rocket - which was launched from the Boeing 747 craft Cosmic Girl - reached abstraction but fell abbreviated of reaching its people orbit.

The ngo was billed arsenic a milestone for UK abstraction exploration. It was hoped it would people a large measurement guardant successful fulfilling an ambition to crook the state into a planetary subordinate - from manufacturing satellites to gathering rockets and creating caller spaceports.