Space Forge - the firm behind Wales' first satellite - has spoken out about its disappointment at the failed satellite launch from Cornwall Airport in Newquay on Tuesday evening.
Co-founder and chief executive of the Cardiff startup, Joshua Western, said the firm shared its pain with the team at Spaceport Cornwall and Virgin Orbit, but he added that he was "incredibly proud" of what Space Forge had achieved.
The Cardiff start-up created ForgeStar-0 - the first satellite designed and built in Wales - which was one of a small number of shoe-box sized satellites that launched as part of an attempt to make British space history by launching a rocket into orbit from UK soil.
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However, the mission ended in failure after suffering an “anomaly” during the flight.
After taking off from Cornwall, the Virgin Orbit plane flew to 35,000ft over the Atlantic Ocean where it jettisoned the rocket containing nine small satellites towards space. Organisers of the Start Me Up mission said the rocket – with a variety of civil and defence applications – failed to orbit.
In a statement, Mr Western said: "We do these things not because they are easy but because they are hard. Unfortunately Virgin Orbit's Start Me Up mission didn't make it to orbit. Onboard was ForgeStar-0, Wales' first satellite.
"I am incredibly proud of what Space Forge achieved. We designed, built, and qualified a satellite in 5 months. ForgeStar-0 passed every ground test and validation we threw at it.
"Our pain is shared across the other payloads, the team at Spaceport Cornwall, and Virgin Orbit."
He added that Space Forge's next mission, ForgeStar-1, is nearing build completion.
"We'll be launching it later this year. It's a far more capable mission being both a demonstration of in-space manufacturing, and our first return attempt," he said.
"The launch did not succeed. But it was still incredible. For the first time a rocket took off from the UK. The history of the space industry is the history of a sector that learns from failures at the vanguard of technology. Nobody ever said it would be easy, but everyone says it will be worth it. We will continue to support launch from the UK and a ForgeStar platform will launch from here.
He added: "We'll wear the ForgeStar-0 mission patch with pride with what we achieved."
In a series of tweets, Virgin Orbit said: “We appear to have an anomaly that has prevented us from reaching orbit. We are evaluating the information. As we find out more, we’re removing our previous tweet about reaching orbit. We’ll share more info when we can.”
While engineers tried to establish what went wrong, the plane returned to Spaceport Cornwall safely.
The plane, dubbed Cosmic Girl, took off on Monday night from Cornwall Airport with hundreds of members of the public watching and over 75,000 viewing a live stream of the event.
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