The ability to launch satellites from British soil for the first time should bolster intelligence services, the head of the country’s first spaceport has said.
The first launch from Britain is expected later this year when eight small satellites are taken into space from Newquay airport in Cornwall by Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit. They will be carried by a rocket that will first be lifted to an altitude of 35,000ft under the wing of a heavily modified jumbo jet.
This kind of “horizontal launch” can operate in weather conditions that would keep traditional “vertical launch” rockets grounded, and be ready at much shorter notice, according to Melissa Thorpe, the chief executive of Spaceport Cornwall.
The military and intelligence agencies are among the target
