The news, which was broken by CNBC, comes just weeks after Virgin Orbit CEO Dan Hart had told employees Orbit was “initiating a company-wide operational pause,” placing them on furlough.

According to the company’s SEC filing, the move to cut around 675 jobs across the company was made “in order to reduce expenses in light of the company’s inability to secure meaningful funding.” This leaves about 100 jobs still in place.

The major workforce reduction — which is set to be “substantially complete” by 3 April, according to the filing — will incur costs of around $15 million USD, which is equivalent to just over £12 million.

Breaking that down, the sum represents around $8.8m (£7m~) in employee severance payments and benefits costs, and approximately $6.5m (£5m~) in costs related to outplacement services and WARN Act exposure. The WARN Act is a U.S. labour law requiring employers to give 60 days notice of layoffs due to closures or mass layoffs.

“Unfortunately, we’ve not been able to secure the funding to provide a clear path for this company. We have no choice but to implement immediate, dramatic and extremely painful changes,” said Dan Hart, according to audio obtained by CNBC.

Virgin Orbit and the UK space industry: A shaky past, present, and future
Virgin Orbit was founded in Long Beach, California, in 2017, as a spinoff of Branson’s space tourism venture, Virgin Galactic. Orbit’s flagship LauncherOne rocket — which was previously a Galactic project — has launched six flights since 2020, with two being failures.

The last failure, which happened in Cornwall on January 9 this year, was supposed to be a historic moment for the UK, representing the first time a satellite space mission had been launched from UK soil. (Orbit’s prior launches took place at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California.) However, the rocket that had been carrying the satellites suffered a technical “anomaly” and failed to reach orbit, thwarting the mission.

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The failure to launch the rocket and its satellites was a blow to the UK’s efforts in trying to establish itself as a space leader, with the UK space industry investing a lot of hope into its success.

It was a particular blow for the UK Space Agency, who contributed money to the project that brought the launch over to the UK. Now, considering the funding difficulties that Orbit is currently facing, it’s not known whether Orbit will launch a rocket again, and let alone from Cornwall.

The UK’s space industry is still holding out some hope, however. In Scotland, the Shetland-located SaxaVord Spaceport, and the Sutherland Spaceport in the north Highlands, are working towards their own vertical rocket launches, with both vying to be successful in doing what Orbit couldn’t in Cornwall.