Enlarge / LauncherOne arrives on the runway at Long Beach Airport for a fit check with Cosmic Girl in October 2018. (credit: Virgin Orbit/Greg Robinson)
This week, Virgin Orbit formally notified investors that it has raised an additional $10 million from Virgin Investments Limited, an investment firm owned by Sir Richard Branson.
Exactly what this filing means for the company’s future will probably not become clear until Virgin Orbit releases financial details about its fourth-quarter earnings for 2022, and this may not happen until late March. But there are a few things in the filing that raise concerns about the financial solvency of the US-based small-launch company.
Virgin Orbit was founded in 2017 by Branson as a small satellite launch company. At that time, it was separated from Virgin Galactic, which is a suborbital space tourism company that aims to fly paying customers on short forays above 80 km. Virgin Orbit drops its LauncherOne rocket from a modified Boeing 747-400 named Cosmic Girl.
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