Starlink satellites fall from the sky and Virgin Orbit goes bust

Sam Matthews
·Executive Producer, Yahoo News
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Welcome to This Week in Outer Space, where you’ll find a roundup of the best space coverage from Yahoo News and our partners. This week was a bad one for billionaires will satellite launch side hustles. Despite an impressive run of launches, SpaceX’s Starlink satellites appear to be having trouble staying aloft. Meanwhile, Sir Richard Branson has called time on his now-bankrupt satellite venture, Virgin Orbit.

Video Transcript

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- While the world's superpowers have their eyes fixed on ambitious missions that will push space exploration to new heights, the day-to-day yeoman's work of schlepping cargo up and down from low Earth orbit, at least in the United States, is a billionaire's game. In the crown jewel in the constellation of private space companies, SpaceX has had a pretty good run lately. Aside from a few last minute delays--

- We have a hold tonight.

- --launches have been running like clockwork and tests of their new Starship rockets are promising signs that bigger and better things may be right around the corner. However, turns out that not everything they're putting into orbit is staying there, which, you know, is not super great. Back in February, 40 first generation Starlink satellites were struck by a geomagnetic storm and fell to Earth in a somewhat spectacular fashion. Now, at the time, SpaceX already had thousands of satellites in orbit and losing a few-- while costly and a bit of a bummer-- is part of the reality of doing business in space.

Geomagnetic storms happen somewhat frequently. And while NASA is working on a way to predict them more accurately, these kinds of accidents are bound to happen. But it turns out that the next generation of miniature Starlink satellites, that began launching a few weeks later, aren't fairing a whole lot better but for a very different, still unknown reason.

In late March, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk confirmed that the V2 mini satellites were experiencing some issues. And since then, at least one has already deorbited. And unless they're able to course correct, a dozen or so more might be on their way down.

And speaking of crashing to the ground, Sir Richard Branson-- serial entrepreneur, billionaire philanthropist, and guy who really knows how to set up a photo op-- has announced that his satellite business, Virgin Orbit, is calling it quits. After months of bad news predicated by a failed launch in January, Virgin Orbit stock plummeted to $0.15 before the company filed for bankruptcy protections. Virgin Orbit's remaining assets are now for sale. And while Elon Musk may have one less competitor in the satellite business, Branson's space tourism venture, Virgin Galactic, is still alive and well.

And that's all the time we've got for this week. Come back next weekend for a brand new "This Week in Outer Space."