Newquay, Cornwall – The first Omani satellite, Aman, failed tolaunch into low Earth orbit from Spaceport Cornwall, in the UK, on early Tuesday.

The satellite, which set off on its historic mission aboard the LauncherOne rocket, failed after “an anomaly” prevented the Virgin Orbit rocket from reaching the orbit.

Virgin Orbit’s modified Boeing 747 jet — dubbed Cosmic Girl — took off in a first launch for the country from the UK soil. But nearly two hours after the plane left the ground and the rocket fired its engines to swoop toward space, Virgin Orbit revealed the launch was a failure.

“It appears that LauncherOne has suffered an anomaly which will prevent us from making orbit for this mission,” said Christopher Relf, director of systems engineering and verification for Virgin Orbit.

The rocket and the nine satellites it was carrying, reportedly burned up in the atmosphere after the launch failed.

A tweet from Virgin Orbit echoed Relf’s comments, reading, “We appear to have an anomaly that has prevented us from reaching orbit. We are evaluating the information.”

Dan Hart, Virgin Orbit CEO, said, “While we are very proud of the many things that we successfully achieved as part of this mission, we are mindful that we failed to provide our customers with the launch service they deserve. The first-time nature of this mission added layers of complexity that our team professionally managed through; however, in the end a technical failure appears to have prevented us from delivering the final orbit. We will work tirelessly to understand the nature of the failure, make corrective actions, and return to orbit as soon as we have completed a full investigation and mission assurance process.”