It’s not every day that fishermen find the remains of a rocket stuck in their net. However, that is precisely what happened to a group of Cork fishermen earlier this year. Remarkably, the origins of the rocket are still shrouded in mystery as the launch it was thought to have been from has since been disproven.
In January, Virgin Orbit had a failed rocket launch from Cornwall in the southwest of England. At the time a warning was issued for possible debris falling in an area off the South-West Coast of Ireland.
So when the Cork fishermen caught more than the monkfish they were fishing for in February it was assumed the rocket was from the Virgin Orbit launch. However, the company has since denied the rocket is theirs, plunging the new discovery into a puzzle as to where it came from.
A spokesperson for Virgin Orbit said “It’s definitely not LauncherOne – the exhaust valves aren’t right – and the satellites are CubeSats – much smaller than that. Also, at the time, Virgin Orbit confirmed the telemetry indicated that LauncherOne stayed on its course throughout its flight, within the safety zone over water west of Africa – so travelled way beyond Irish waters.”
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One clue may come from the manufacturer of the rocket which appears to be a rocket engine manufacturer Aerojet Rocketdyne which is based in Sacramento, California and describes itself as “at the centre of defence and discovery.”
The company exports to customers all around the world providing propulsion and energetics, missile defence, and strategic, tactical missiles and armaments.
However, when approached by the Irish Examiner, the company did not provide any details of the launch in which the debris was a part of.
Nonetheless, a spokesperson for Cork City Council did say: “Part of an engine recovered by an Irish fishing vessel during routine fishing operations has been brought into Keelbeg pier.
Cork County Council has advised the relevant authorities and does not have any further information at this time.”
It must have been quite a sight for the crew on board the fishing ship, the Emerald Isle when the rocket debris emerged in the net. Since then all efforts to find the source of the rocket have turned up nothing, intriguing the fishermen and locals alike.
Conor Paterson