Deorbited: Virgin Orbit files for bankruptcy in the US as funding dries up

Shortly thereafter, the company went public after raising $225 million and was valued at $3 billion at the time. However, it failed to replicate its success, and launch issues marred its progress.

Why space is hard?

2022 was supposed to be a busy year for Virgin Orbit with plans to carry out launches every week, a Space.com report said in 2021. What we saw instead was pushing back of launch deadlines which further dented investor confidence in the company.

Even when Virgin Orbit raised its $225 million to go public, the money raised was below expectations. With an estimated cash burn of $20 million a month, according to an Ars Technica report, Virgin Orbit needed repetitive successful launches to keep itself going.

Virgin Orbit's 70-foot rocket called Launcher One was tasked with deploying nine satellites earlier in January this year, a first from U.K. soil. However, a second-stage failure meant that the rocket failed to reach orbit and the nine payloads belonging to the U.S. and U.K. intelligence agencies were forever lost. Also lost, were hopes of raising some money from the U.K. government to further fund Virgin Orbit's research and development work.

According to a Reuters report, Virgin Orbit was looking to raise $200 million last month but when talks collapsed, the company had to lay off employees. Branson's Virgin Investments Limited has given the company $10.7 million to fund severances.

As per last year's filings, Virgin Orbit has a debt of $153 million and assets of $243 million and the bankruptcy filing is being looked at as the best path forward to "finalize an efficient and value-maximizing sale," CEO Dan Hart said in a statement.

The filing of the bankruptcy allows Virgin Orbit to reorganize its debt and assets and continue operations during this period. If Virgin Orbit can fix the rocket science that ails the company, this might not truly be the end of plane-assisted satellite launches.