Virgin Orbit is a private small satellite launch provider operated by Virgin Group. We explore their role in the space sector and how their novel air-launch system works.
it belongs to a start up company called space forge, which is based in cardiff in wales. their satellites are mini factories that will make new materials while in orbit. in space, with the absence of gravity, you can mix together any different material you kind of want, and so if you take the whole period table and start putting things together, like lead aluminium, rubidium, einsteinium, there s billions of new alloys that you can now make that you couldn t make on earth. now, 99.9% of them won t be useful, but there will be a small fraction that are really useful, can be used in next generation, more efficient electric cars, planes, aircraft, faster computing, materials we are crying out for right now. the ability to launch british built devices from british soil could make a big difference. the fact that we can just drive down the road for a couple of hours