Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Thank you, Mr. Air, a netizen of CTOnews.com, for your clue delivery! CTOnews.com, April 4 (Reuters)-Richard Branson's Virgin orbit Holdings filed for bankruptcy protection in the United States on Tuesday after failing to secure the long-term funding needed to recover from a January rocket failure.

The California-based company filed an application with the Delaware bankruptcy court to sell its assets after announcing last week that it would lay off about 85 per cent of its 750 employees.

The company's assets and liabilities listed in its filings range from US $100m to US $500m (CTOnews.com Note: currently about RMB 688 million to RMB 3.44 billion).

Virgin orbit, a small satellite launch company owned by British billionaire Richard Branson, was founded in 2017 to develop and commercialize an air launch rocket system called LauncherOne. The system could put a 500-pound small satellite into low-earth orbit, but failed in its first test in May 2020. In January 2021, the company successfully put 10 small NASA satellites into orbit and completed its first commercial launch in June. In January and July 2022, the company successfully launched a number of satellites. But in January 2023, the company made its first commercial launch in the UK, but the rocket was unable to put a payload into orbit because of a $100 fuel filter failure.

Overall, Virgin orbit made a total of six flights between 2020 and 2023, of which only four were successful. This has left the company in financial difficulties and unable to continue to operate. Branson invested 55 million dollars in the dying space company, but eventually abandoned the rescue plan.

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