Virgin Orbit’s days of slinging satellites into space aboard aircraft-launched rockets have come to an end Thursday. After six years in business, Virgin’s satellite launch subsidiary has announced via SEC filing that it does not have the funding to continue operations and will be shuttering for “the foreseeable future,” per CNBC. Nearly 90 percent of Virgin Orbit’s employees — 675 people in total — will be laid off immediately.Virgin Orbit was founded in 2017 for the purpose of developing and commercializing LauncherOne, a satellite launch system fitted under a modified 747 airliner, dubbed Cosmic Girl. The system was designed to put 500 pounds of cubesats into Low Earth Orbit by firing them in a rocket from said airliner flying at an altitude of 30,000 - 50,000 feet. Despite a string of early successes — both in terms of development milestones and expanding service contracts with the UK military, LauncherOne’s first official test in May of 2020 failed to
