MasterClass has dropped the price of its annual memberships by 50 percent, making it a more affordable way to explore its full library of courses across cooking, business, photography, writing and more. With the discount applied, you’ll spend $10 per month when billed annually for the Premium tier, with lower-cost Standard and Plus options available depending on how many devices you want to use at once and whether you need offline viewing.
There are more than 200 classes on MasterClass now, and many are led by big names at the top of their fields. Depending on your interests, you might pick up cooking tips from Gordon Ramsay, learn storytelling from Margaret Atwood, explore business strategy with Richard Branson or get insights into performance and mindset from athletes and entertainers. The catalog spans everything from film and TV to wellness, music, science, leadership and photography, so it’s easy to dip in and find something that holds your attention.
MasterClass
Get 50 percent off all MasterClass subscription tiers.
Over the years, MasterClass has expanded into a broad learning platform that feels like part streaming service and part educational library. The catalog spans categories like food, film, music, wellness, sports and entrepreneurship, with lessons designed to be short and easy to follow. Since every plan includes access to the full course library, the choice mostly comes down to convenience. The Standard tier supports one device and doesn’t include offline mode, the Plus plan allows streaming on two devices with downloads, and the Premium tier increases that to six devices with offline access as well.
Classes are structured to be approachable whether you want to learn a new skill or just explore a topic out of curiosity. Lessons are broken into bite-sized segments, so it’s easy to watch one or two at a time on a commute or in the evening. Members also get access to a global community, occasional newsletters and the ability to switch between video and audio listening on supported classes.
If you’ve been considering trying MasterClass, this deal makes it a more affordable way to see if it works for you. A subscription can also double as a thoughtful gift, which is one reason it has appeared in Engadget’s roundup of the best subscription gifts to send to loved ones. With the current 50 percent discount applied across all tiers, it’s a relatively low-cost way to get access to a large library of professionally produced courses that you can watch at your own pace throughout the year.
Branson is the co-founder of Virgin Group, a global investment and venture capital firm. He shared the news via Instagram.
“She was the most wonderful mum and grandmum our kids and grandkids could have ever wished for,” Branson wrote. “She was my best friend, my rock, my guiding light, my world. Love you forever, Joan x.”
Just yesterday, Branson shared a picture of the two captioned, “Love this photo of Joan.” Earlier in November, he said, “Everyone needs a Joan in their life.”
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Branson and Templeman met when she was working in a ‘bric-a-brac’ shop in London. In an article on the Virgin Group website titled “Behind every man there’s a great woman,” Branson said “I fell in love with her from the first moment I saw her.”
“To win her heart, I had to persistently hang around the shop and buy countless objects before we started courting,” Branson wrote, adding that his favorite was an advertising sign for Danish bacon.
Two years later, Branson bought Templeman an island in the British Virgin Islands.
“We were still in the early days of Virgin Records and I definitely did not have the cash to buy it—but try telling that to a fool in love!” Branson wrote in a blog on their 44 year anniversary.
Necker Island, as it was named, is where the couple married in 1989. Their two kids, Holly and Sam, followed suit and were each wed there, too.
Holly serves as Virgin’s chief purpose and vision officer, and Sam is a co-founder of HiddenLight Productions, along with Hillary Clinton and daughter Chelsea Clinton. Both are co-founders of Big Change, a charitable trust under Virgin Unite.
The cause of Templeman’s death has not been disclosed.
Timothy Armoo, co-founder and former CEO of Fanbytes.
Timothy Armoo
Timothy Armoo is a 29-year-old millionaire who became rich by selling his influencer marketing firm for eight-figures, but the young, Black entrepreneur had to beat the odds to find success.
Armoo, the co-founder and former CEO of Fanbytes, hails from what was one of the most impoverished areas in south London and as a teenager lived with his dad on a fourth floor council estate — public housing — on Old Kent Road in the borough of Southwark.
“It was the poorest place,” Armoo told CNBC Make It in an interview. “It was at the peak of when Peckham, Brixton and Old Kent Road were having their beef [British slang for conflict] so it was in the middle of the gang warfare. Between 2005 and 2012 was the peak of the South London gangs.”
Trust for London names Southwark as one of 19 boroughs that have “significantly” higher levels of poverty compared to England as a whole.
Armoo knew he was poor, but he had a keen entrepreneurial spirit and managed to cobble together some money by starting his own tutoring business at 14-years-old.
He taught fellow students math and as more students approached him for help with other subjects, he started connecting them with tutors he knew and took a cut of the fee.
“I remember very specifically the first time I connected these two people,” he said. “Jane needed some help with chemistry, and I connected her to Harry, and Harry helped her, and I got £5 (around $6.6) in commission for connecting them, because [the business] charged £15 an hour.”
It was only when Armoo received a scholarship to go to a private boarding school when he was just 16-years-old to complete his A-Levels — equivalent to the Advanced Placement program in the U.S. — that his entire view of wealth changed.
“I remember one day this kid got picked up in a helicopter,” he recalled. “It opened up my eyes that there is a way to build wealth and you don’t have to be Richard Branson. There’s a whole world of people in between there.”
He started to realize that “money was a tool” to change his life and the fastest way to escape poverty was to start his own business.
“When I was growing up on that fourth floor council estate, I would always say to myself ‘This is temporary. This is temporary. This is temporary,’” he said. “I didn’t get to choose the circumstances I was in at 10 years old … but at least I got to decide what ends up happening.”
Here’s how Armoo went from living in a council estate to starting his own business and then becoming a millionaire before the age of 30.
Armoo was 17-years-old and still completing his A-Levels when he sold his first business, an online blog called Entrepreneur Express, for £110,000, after only 11 months of running it.
“Everyone’s aspiration was to go to Oxbridge [The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge] and mine was just ‘I want to make money and I want to get out of my s—ty situation,’” Armoo said.
The 29-year-old interviewed high-profile figures for Entrepreneur Express from the likes of Virgin Group co-founder Richard Branson, the face of the British TV show “The Apprentice” Alan Sugar and actor James Caan, but making the blog profitable was a challenge.
Initially he had a print version of the blog ready to be taken in by university society groups but as the deadline drew closer, he realized he didn’t have enough advertising to sustain the print publication.
The young entrepreneur then turned his attention to placing advertisements on the online blog. “This is where I had my success,” he said.
He said his “hack” was the distribution of content from the blog via viral social media accounts on Instagram and Facebook such as meme pages and feel-good quote pages.
Armoo would package the articles into social media posts with a hook like “10 quotes to…” and this would drive people from the post to his site.
“The way that we made money was by two things: one was programmatic advertising — so just banner ads, but I would also then sell sponsored slots to tax firms, law firms, and accountancy firms so they could get a direct ROI [return on investment.]”
Armoo said your first business doesn’t need to be “a billion dollar idea.” Instead “your first business should just get you on the first money ladder.”
He echoed the advice of the late investment guru Charlie Munger who said that making the first $100,000 is the hardest “but you gotta do it.”
Armoo agreed saying: “If you optimize for that first £100,000 … you slog, and you go crazy for it, life just becomes easier, because then you know a bit of the playbook… now, at the very least, you have a financial cushion to make choices which are not as risky.”
Armoo co-founded Fanbytes with Ambrose Cooke and Mitchell Fasanya in 2017.
Tim Armoo
Armoo considers himself an early pioneer in the burgeoning creator economy industry because he co-founded the influencer marketing firm Fanbytes in 2017 with Ambrose Cooke and Mitchell Fasanya.
Fanbytes’ goal was to connect brands with influencers to create advertising campaigns — a popular marketing strategy at the time as companies transitioned from traditional advertising to using influencers on social media to sell products.
Their strategy worked as Fanbytes amassed a notable roster of clients from Nike, Samsung, Amazon and ITV, Armoo said.
One 2016 study by TapInfluence found that social media influencer marketing was 11 times more effective than banner ads on a website, which is why brands were flocking to influencers, according to CNBC reporting.
“I saw the rise of influencer marketing in the U.S.,” Armoo said and he decided to replicate the idea in the U.K.
You don’t always need to invent something new as an entrepreneur, instead you can “service existing demand,” Armoo advised.
The company was “raising dribs and drabs,” across different stagesbefore ultimately raising £2 million in funding.
“First ever bit of investment was like 15 grand, then 40 grand, and then 120 grand, and then 300 grand, and then 600 grand,” Armoo said.
His work with Fanbytes landed him on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in 2021, and soon after in October that year, offers started rolling in from people wanting to purchase Fanbytes.
He then appointed a bank to coordinate deals for the company which went on to find six companies interested in acquiring Fanbytes.
Armoo, who was 27-years-old at the time, and his co-founders sold Fanbytes to Brainlabs, a global digital marketing agency, in an eight-figure deal in May 2022, which made them all multi-millionaires.
“The aim was always to build something that could be sold,” Armoo said. “I spoke to this guy once when I was pretty early on in my journey, and he said that you can make money while running a business, but you build wealth by selling the business.”
Armoo always knew that he didn’t want to run Fanbytes for the rest of his life.
“Fanbytes could have been selling shoelaces to frogs and I still would have been passionate if I thought this is a business we are building and it has the end goal of being something that can achieve financial security,” he said.
Armoo and his co-founders sold Fanbytes to Brainlabs in May 2022.
Timothy Armoo
Black founders often struggle to raise capital. In fact, Black-founded startups in the U.S. only raised 0.48% of all venture dollars allocated in 2023, per Crunchbase data previously reported by CNBC.
This follows a decline in funding being given to Black-owned businesses since 2020, after the murder of George Floyd and the social justice movement that followed his death.
Meanwhile, 87% of non-white founders said they faced more barriers to fundraising compared with 79% of white founders, according to Atomico’s State of European Tech Report 2023.
Armoo says it was all about perspective and believed that being Black didn’t hold him back.
“Everyone remembered the bearded Black guy in a room full of white people. Everyone remembers that and so for me, it increases how memorable you are,” he said about his experience of going to events to meet investors.
He explained that you can either walk into a room and feel insecure because there aren’t that many people that look like you, or you can believe that that factor will help you standout.
“I never saw myself as a Black entrepreneur. I always just saw myself as an entrepreneur,” he said.
“I think maybe I’m too logical for my own good. I was like ‘investors want to make money. This business is going to make them money. I’m going to show them how it makes them money.’ That’s it. I didn’t really think they cared if it was coming from the mouth of a white guy or a Black guy.”
Now, as a 29-year-old millionaire, Armoo is confident that this world view has “served him well.”
Steve Cohen at the SportiConference Invest In Sports 2023 in New York. Bryan Bedder/Sportico via Getty Images
Billionaire Steve Cohen is betting big on golf. The hedge fund manager predicts that with the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence (A.I.), the normalization of the four-day workweek will cause a boom in leisure and give workers more time to hit the greens.
Cohen, the media-shy head of Point72 Asset Management, discussed his prediction in a rare interview with CNBC Squawk Box. “My belief is the four-day workweek is coming,” he said. “I just think it’s an eventuality.”
Despite being known for the owner of the New York Mets, Cohen has made moves in the golf world in recent months. In September, he acquired the rights to a New York team in TGL, a high-tech golf league formed by tiger woods and Rory McIlroy. And as part of a consortium that includes Boston Red Sox owner John Henry and former Milwaukee Bucks co-owner Marc Lasry, the hedge fund manager invested as much as $3 billion in the PGA Tour earlier this year.
“We think it’s an interesting investment,” Cohen told CNBC of the golf industry, adding that “the way it’s been run, we can improve the operations and make it much more profitable.” Some of that profit could come from expanded leisure time. Between the rise of A.I. and the fact that “people are not as productive on Fridays,” Cohen is gearing up for four-day work weeks to become the norm in the future. With an extra day off, he believes industries around travel and experience will benefit. “I guess courses will be crowded on Fridays,” he said.
Get ready for year-round three-day weekends
Don’t expect Cohen’s employees at Point72 to be taking part as long as the markets remain open throughout the week. “If they’re taking off Friday and they have a portfolio, that’s a problem,” he noted. “Forgetting us, the vast majority of people will get an opportunity, I think at some point, to get a three-day weekend.”
Cohen isn’t the only finance heavyweight to predict a move toward compressed work weeks. Fellow billionaire Ray Dalio made a similar point while speaking at the Milken Institute’s Asia Summit last year, where he claimed that A.I. will let humans work fewer hours and urged for policies to prevent a potential widening of the wealth gap. And back in 2018, business magnate Richard Branson predicted in a blog post that emerging technologies would transform the five-day workweek as we know it.
While traditional working hours have remained largely steady across the U.S., some companies have been increasingly experimenting with work structures. The clothing reseller ThredUp, for example, has already embraced a four-day workweek, while New York City’s largest public employee union recently launched a compressed workweek pilot program that will run until May of next year.
Beyond its effects on work structures, Cohen told CNBC that A.I. is poised to transform how companies operate. “My view is this is a very durable theme,” he said, noting that his firm could save $25 million by using large language models to improve efficiency. “Now, we’re a nice-sized firm; we’re not a huge firm. Imagine what big companies can do.”
Cohen also discussed his plans for the New York Mets, which have recently had an unsuccessful run under his ownership despite a large injection of cash. Moving forward, he will continue overseeing strategy experts and prioritizing the development of young talent. These tactics parallel his approach towards running Point72, noted Cohen. “I’m used to operating in a very centralized way. I give people a lot of rope.”
IT has been a terrible week for a string of disgraced paedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s pals and associates who have been exposed in a cache of newly unsealed court docs.
The splew of unsealed docs have exposed Jeffrey Epstein’s inner circle and further detail of his depraved sexual crimes he committed alongside disgraced British socialised, Ghislaine MaxwellCredit: The Mega Agency
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The new files reveal an alleged plot to blackmail Prince Andrew over his alleged sexual encounter with Virginia GiuffreCredit: Jae Donnelly
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Former President Bill Clinton (pictured with Epstein and Maxwell) has also been dragged into the spotlight with allegations he likes girls ‘young’Credit: The Mega Agency
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Giuiffre has alleged she was trafficked by Epstein and given to Andrew and ‘two of the world’s most respected politicians’Credit: PA
Delivered in several anticipated drops, the files have revealed the inner-workings of Epstein’s world – while dragging a sprinkling of previously unmentioned celebrities and politicians into the mix.
The docs have made public the lurid details of a string of sexual allegations made against Prince Andrew, former presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, physicist Stephen Hawking and A-list celebrities.
1. Andrew, Clinton & Branson’s ‘sex tapes’
Epstein victim Sarah Ransome wrote emails to a reporter in 2016 claiming the duke, Bill Clinton and billionaire businessman Sir Richard Branson were filmed having sex by Epstein on separate occasions.
READ MORE ON EPSTEIN DOCS
She later retracted the claims and told the New Yorker in 2019 “she had invented the tapes to draw attention to Epstein’s behaviour, and to make him believe that she had ‘evidence that would come out if he harmed me’”.
All of the above have always vehemently denied any wrongdoing over their association with Epstein and no tapes have ever emerged publicly.
A spokesman for Branson blasted the claims as “baseless and unfounded”.
2. Stephen Hawking’s ‘underage orgy’
The doc drop revealed an email that had been sent from Epstein to Maxwell that showed the billionaire asking her to “issue a reward” to any of Giuffre’s friends who “come forward and help prove her allegations are false”.
Among the allegations listed by Epstein in the email were a “Clinton dinner” and a claim that Stephen Hawking “participated in an underage orgy”.
In the message, Epstein suggested Giuffre had made claims about both the British scientist and former US President Bill Clinton.
The email read: “You can issue a reward to any of Virginia’s friends, acquaints, family that come forward and help prove her allegations are false.
In 2015, photos emerged showing Hawking, who died in 2018 aged 76, being hosted on Epstein’s private Caribbean island before he was first charged in 2006.
The internationally renowned physicist was pictured at a barbecue on Little St James, often referred to as Epstein’s “Paedo Island”.
He was part of a group of 21 scientists attending a conference in March 2006, which Epstein had funded.
3. Duke of York’s ‘underage orgy’
A woman named only as Jane Doe 3 alleged she was “forced” into sexual relations with “a member of the British Royal Family, Prince Andrew (a/k/a Duke of York)”.
In 2019, Clinton’s spokesman said he knew “nothing about the terrible crimes Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to” and that the pair had not spoken “in over a decade”.
6. Giuffre ‘trafficked’ to Andrew and ‘two of world’s most respected politicians’
In an email exchange with journalist Sharon Churcher in May 2011, Giuffre said she was concerned about speaking out after Clinton had allegedly “threatened them not to write sex-trafficking articles” about Epstein.
In a follow up email, Churcher said it would be a “gamble” for Giuffre to not have more to say about how she was “sex-trafficked to PA [Prince Andrew] and other men including two of the world’s most respected politicians”.
The names of the two politicians in the email remain redacted.
In Giuffre’s deposition released on Tuesday, she alleged she had sex with New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson who passed away in September and another “prominent US politician” when she was 17.
Asked how many times she allegedly had sex with the unnamed official, she replied “twice that I can recall.”
7. Donald Trump’s sex with ‘many girls’
Ransome also claimed that “many girls” had sexual relations with former US president Donald Trump, including her friend who wasn’t named.
In an email written to a journalist in 2016 and filed in court papers, Ransome said: “She confided in me about her casual ‘friendship’ with Donald. Mr. Trump definitely seemed to have a thing for her and she told me how he kept going on about how he liked her ‘pert nipples,’”.
The claims were also flagged by Dershowitz in his letter which attempted to prove the Epstein victim lacked credibility.
Provisional search terms used by lawyers to find relevant files on Maxwell’s computers were also disclosed in the documents.
Amongst the terms on a list were “Andrew”, “Prince”, “Royal”, “PA”, “Kensington”, “Duke” and “York”.
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A picture of Ransome on Epstein’s island included in the newly unsealed files
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Sarah Ransome doubled down on her previous sex tape claims this weekCredit: Netflix
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She also alleged Epstein raped her ‘three times’ in a single dayCredit: AFP
9. Duke and Duchess of York ‘friends’ with Epstein
Epstein’s former housekeeper Juan Alessi claimed Andrew had “daily massages” while he stayed at the paedophile financier’s Florida home.
During his video-taped interview under oath in 2009, Alessi said Sarah, Duchess of York, only paid a short visit to Epstein, but the duke “spent weeks with us”.
The disgraced financier pleaded the fifth amendment eight times as he was quizzed during a former trial against his ex-lover, Maxwell.
He was directly asked whether he and Maxwell instructed Giuffre to have sex with Andrew and whether he had asked her to gather a “full report” to be later used as “blackmail material”.
He was also questioned over whether Andrew had sex with Giuffre “several times” and if the information gathered for the trial had “the potential to affect the reputation” of the duke.
To each targeted question, Epstein exercised his right to the fifth amendment – refusing to answer to avoid incriminating himself.
Andrew’s accuser has previously claimed he sexually assaulted her in a Victorian-style bath at Ghislaine’s mews house in Belgravia in March 2001.
Monday’s drop of documents revealed Maxwell’s lawyer had claimed that Giuffre lied about having sex with Andrew because he was “too big for the bath”.
The prince strenuously denies any wrongdoing.
However, the late Queen’s second son stepped down from public life after the furore over his friendship with Epstein, and paid millions to settle a civil sexual assault case with Giuffre – a woman he claimed never to have met.
11. Maxwell’s fears over links to Andrew
Maxwell could be seen sending an email in January 2015, shortly after a civil claim had been filed against her, in which she described herself as “out of my depth”.
The socialite said: “I have already suffered such a terrible and painful loss over the last few days that I can’t even see what life after press hell even looks like – statements that don’t address all just lead to more questions… what is my relationship to Clinton? Andrew on and on.”
Maxwell has been imprisoned since July 2020 despite attempts by her defence counsel to have her released on bail.
She was sentenced to 20 years in prison at the federal court in the Southern District of New York in June 2022.
Epstein was found hung in a prison cell in New York on August 10, 2019, while awaiting trial for a range of offences, including trafficking minors for sex, and multiple rapes.
How you can get help
Women’s Aid has this advice for victims and their families:
Always keep your phone nearby.
Get in touch with charities for help, including the Women’s Aid live chat helpline and services such as SupportLine.
If you are in danger, call 999.
Familiarise yourself with the Silent Solution, reporting abuse without speaking down the phone, instead dialing “55”.
Always keep some money on you, including change for a pay phone or bus fare.
If you suspect your partner is about to attack you, try to go to a lower-risk area of the house – for example, where there is a way out and access to a telephone.
Avoid the kitchen and garage, where there are likely to be knives or other weapons. Avoid rooms where you might become trapped, such as the bathroom, or where you might be shut into a cupboard or other small space.
If you are a victim of domestic abuse, SupportLine is open Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 6pm to 8pm on 01708 765200. The charity’s email support service is open weekdays and weekends during the crisis – messageinfo@supportline.org.uk.
Women’s Aid provides a live chat service – available weekdays from 8am-6pm and weekends 10am-6pm.
You can also call the freephone 24-hour National Domestic Abuse Helpline on 0808 2000 247.
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Most of Epstein’s sexual crimes took place on ‘Paedo island’ – Little Saint James in the US Virgin IslandsCredit: AP:Associated Press
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Dozens of haunting photos taken at Epstein’s ‘Paedo Island’ show him and Maxwell hosting famous pals and scantily-clad young girls and womenCredit: The Mega Agency
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A new cache of allegations against the Duke of Yorke have been unsealed – he denies wrongdoingCredit: PA
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Victims of Jeffrey Epstein – Sarah Ransome, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, and Marijke ChartouniCredit: Alamy
The rolling hills of New Jersey’s Somerset County form the backdrop for the townhouses.
Turpin Realtors
Take a 20th-century Tudor-style estate, throw in a Moroccan king and British businessman Richard Branson, add beets and tomatoes, and you have the makings of a new ultraluxury community in the rolling hills of New Jersey.
Natirar, as it’s called, is a country community based on wellness, sustainable living and connecting with nature. It’s set inside a 500-acre park (think maximum privacy) in the Peapack-Gladstone borough of Somerset County in New Jersey, less than an hour from New York City.
The original mansion will be refreshed as part of the development plan.
CHRISTIAN HORAN PHOTOGRAPHY for Turpin Realtors
When completed, the 90-acre spread will include a refresh of the historic mansion (more on that later), a new Pendry Natirar hotel, an existing highly rated restaurant and cooking school, a working farm and 24 newly built gated residences — two of which are currently on the market for just under $4 million each.
Pendry Estate Residences located at 45 Abby Road and 47 Abby Road were designed to blend in with the countryside. The townhouse residences (there are just 12 in this gated area) have a sleek contemporary exterior made of wood, stone and floor-to-ceiling windows to celebrate the setting and surrounding views.
The townhouses feature elevators and rooftop belvederes.
Turpin Realtors
The four-level homes feature two bedrooms and three bathrooms in more than 5,000 square feet of living space. An elevator connects the lower, main and upper levels. Grand views unfold from the rooftop belvedere, which has indoor space for a yoga studio or office and an outdoor patio for relaxing or entertaining.
The main level consists of the living room, which has a gas-powered stone fireplace and leads to an outdoor terrace; the dining room; and chef’s kitchen, with quartz countertops and top-quality appliances. Bedrooms are located on the upper level, and a large multipurpose room with bathroom is on the lower level. Another dozen residences are planned for the farm area of the development.
The contemporary homes feature center island kitchens.
Turpin Realtors
“Pendry Residences, whether they are in the city or out here, refer to ‘elevated living,’ referring to the services and amenities and quality of construction,” says Ashley Christus of Turpin Realtors. “You can have every service available to you at the hotel at the residences.”
Residents have access to concierge services as well as membership in the private Natirar Club; the new 66-room Pendry Hotel with a spa, health and fitness center, tennis, restaurants and pools (expected to be completed in May 2024); and privileges at the on-site 12-acre farm, such as having fresh produce delivered to your doorstep.
The Naritar Mansion in the Peapack-Gladstone borough dates to 1912.
CHRISTIAN HORAN PHOTOGRAPHY for Turpin Realtors
Ownership also comes with priority status at Ninety Acres Restaurant and the Natirar Culinary School, which opened in 2009, and travel arrangements for hotels in the Pendry-Montage family of hotels and resorts (Pendry Hotels is a division of Montage International).
Among potential buyers may be families living in the area who are downsizing and have multiple homes in other areas but want to keep “a foothold in the community,” Christus says.
The more than 5,000-square-foot residences contain expansive primary suites.
Turpin Realtors
The site dates to 1912 when heiress Kate Macy Ladd and her husband, Walter Ladd, completed the 33,000-square-foot Natirar Mansion, so named as a backward spelling of the nearby Raritan River. At the suggestion of publisher and businessman Malcolm Forbes, the late King Hassan II of Morocco purchased the property in 1983 at a time when his sons attended nearby Princeton University.
After the king’s death, Somerset County bought the property in 2023 for $22 million. Robert and Kim Wojtowicz leased 90 acres of the 400-plus-acre estate to develop a luxury farm-to-table community that’s been in the works for two and a half decades. The Wojtowiczs initially partnered with Branson but moved on to Montage to complete the vision.
The on-site farm can provide homeowners with fresh produce.
CHRISTIAN HORAN PHOTOGRAPHY for Turpin Realtors
The mansion, which has been used as a wedding venue with a large ballroom, will be refreshed and serve as the reception area for the surrounding Pendry Hotel. Toronto-based DesignAgency will handle the hotel’s feel and style.
Residents in Natirar also have access to outdoor activities, such as hiking, biking, horseback riding and birding within the park. The property at 45 Abby Road sells for $3.85 million; 47 Abby Road goes for $3.95 million. Ashley Christus of Turpin Realtors is the listing agent.
The bucolic site offers luxury amenties and room to roam.
Planetary scientist Alan Stern, who spearheaded NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto, enjoyed a spaceflight of his own Thursday, soaring to the edge of space and back aboard Virgin Galactic’s winged spaceplane, chalking up the company’s fifth commercial sub-orbital flight.
Stern, researcher and STEM “influencer” Kellie Gerardi, Italian investment manager Ketty Maisonrouge, two Virgin Galactic pilots and a company trainer were carried aloft by a carrier jet that released the Unity spaceplane at an altitude of about 44,700 feet above the New Mexico desert.
The hybrid motor powering Virgin Galactic’s Unity spaceplane ignites high above New Mexico Thursday, propelling the craft to the lower edge of space in the company’s tenth sub-orbital flight out of the discernible atmosphere.
Virgin Galactic
At the controls were Unity commander Michael Masucci and pilot Kelly Latimer, both veterans of earlier flights. Virgin astronaut trainer Colin Bennett joined the three passengers in Unity’s multi-window cabin.
Seconds after release, Unity’s hybrid rocket motor ignited with a rush of flame, propelling the ship up on a near-vertical trajectory, accelerating to nearly three times the speed of sound.
The motor then shut down and the crew enjoyed three to four minutes of weightlessness as Unity coasted up to an altitude of 54.2 miles — NASA recognizes 50 miles as the “boundary” between the discernible atmosphere and space — where it arced over and began the long fall back to Earth.
During their brief sojourn in weightlessness, Stern and Gerardi collected data with five experiments primarily focused on the physiological aspects of microgravity.
Stern wore a biomedical harness to monitor his body’s reaction to weightlessness and planned to practice procedures with a high-tech camera that will be used on a future NASA astronomical research mission. Gerardi planned to operate three experiments related to microgravity healthcare and fluid dynamics.
Unity carried two Virgin Galactic pilots and a company astronaut trainer, along with three paying customers: researcher Alan Stern, back right at window, European investment manager Ketty Maisonrouge, front left, and STEM educator/researcher Kellie Gerardi, center. Virgin Galactic astronaut trainer Colin Bennett is just out of view at bottom right.
Virgin Galactic
A former chief of NASA’s science division and principal investigator with the agency’s New Horizons mission to Pluto, Stern was sponsored by the Southwest Research Institute where he now helps lead the space science division.
“Our objective in developing requirements, procedures timelines and training runs is to maximize the value of this first spaceflight and to minimize risks to performance on the second flight while doing NASA experiment work,” Stern wrote before launch.
“And while there is always more one could do, I believe we have a solid plan both for flight ops and for training to perform those that’s commensurate with the low cost of this mission. Of course, the proof of that will come at showtime, in space, high above southern New Mexico!”
Gerardi’s trip was sponsored by the International Institute for Astronautical Sciences while her experiments were developed by the National Research Council of Canada. Maisonrouge is an investment manager who was born in Italy and grew up in Switzerland and France. She was among Virgin’s first customers, reportedly paying $250,000 for a seat back in 2005.
As it began descending, Unity’s two swept-back wings rotated upward, or “feathered,” earlier in the flight, working as designed to properly orient the spacecraft, increase atmospheric drag and reduce the “loads” acting on the ship during re-entry.
The view from a short visit to sub-orbital space.
Virgin Galactic
Back in the lower atmosphere, the wings rotated back down parallel to the fuselage and the pilots guided the spaceplane, now flying as a glider, to touchdown on Spaceport America’s 12,000-foot-long runway just west of the White Sands Missile Range at 11:59 a.m. EDT.
It was Unity’s 10th piloted flight above an altitude of 50 miles and Virgin’s fifth fully commercial flight in a row with paying customers aboard. Overall, Virgin Galactic has launched 49 company employees and commercial passengers in Unity’s 10 sub-orbital flights to date.
Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, which has launched six sub-orbital flights with 32 passengers using its more traditional New Shepard rocket and capsule, is currently in a standdown while resolving a booster problem that occurred during an unpiloted microgravity research flight last year.
Virgin Galactic’s next flight is planned for January. Blue Origin is expected to resume New Shepard flights before the end of the year.
Bill Harwood has been covering the U.S. space program full-time since 1984, first as Cape Canaveral bureau chief for United Press International and now as a consultant for CBS News.
A Virgin Galactic rocketplane made space tourism history Thursday when it carried its first group of tourists to the edge of space, 55 miles above the earth. The passengers included a former British Olympian.
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Virgin Galactic, the company founded by billionaire Richard Branson, launched a rocket plane carrying six people to the edge of space Thursday for its first-ever sub-orbital commercial flight.
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Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic launched its first commercial space flight Thursday, sending three Italian researchers, two company pilots and an astronaut trainer on a high-speed thrill ride to the edge of space aboard a winged rocketplane.
Cheered on by Virgin employees, family members and friends gathered at Spaceport America in New Mexico, the twin-fuselage VMS Eve carrier jet took off around 10:30 a.m. EDT, carrying the company’s VSS Unity spaceplane and its six passengers up to an altitude of about 45,000 feet.
After final checks, clamps opened and Unity detached from Eve’s mid-wing attachment mechanism at 11:28 a.m.
Seconds later, the spacecraft’s hybrid rocket motor ignited with a rush of flame, instantly propelling Unity up and out of the lower atmosphere on a near-vertical trajectory. Cameras mounted on the hull of the ship showed the Earth dropping away and the sky changing to deep black as the ship gained altitude.
Virgin Galactic’s spaceplane launched with its first commercial crew aboard on June 28, 2023.
Virgin Galactic
One minute later, now traveling 2.8 times the speed of sound at an altitude of 136,000 feet, the rocket motor shut down, leaving the six crew members weightless as Unity coasted up to an altitude of 51.8 miles, just above the somewhat arbitrary 50-mile-high “boundary” between space and the discernible atmosphere.
Along the way, veteran pilot Mike Masucci and rookie co-pilot Nicola Pecile “feathered” the ship’s wings, folding the swept-back wing-tip fins up about 60 degrees in a unique procedure invented by legendary aircraft designer Burt Rutan to minimize heating and speeds during re-entry.
In the meantime, Italian Air Force Col. Walter Villadei, Lt. Col. Angelo Landolfi and Pantaleone Carlucci, representing Italy’s National Research Council, began carrying out or monitoring 13 experiments designed to collect data about the effects of weightlessness on themselves and a variety of technological processes.
Amid switch throws and experiment activations, Villadei took a moment to unfurl an Italian flag as he floated above his crewmates.
The researchers were assisted by Colin Bennett, Virgin Galactic’s chief astronaut trainer. It was the company’s sixth piloted sub-orbital space flight and the first to carry paying customers, a milestone that has taken the company more than a decade longer than expected to achieve.
Meet the crew from the @ItalianAirForce & @CNRSocial_. On June 29, they will take-off to conduct more than a dozen experiments in space, which will examine how microgravity effects the human body and other materials. Learn more about their roles and sign… pic.twitter.com/1CKq2FTKtn
As with all such sub-orbital flights, the crew only had about three minutes of weightlessness as the ship arced over the top of its trajectory and began falling back to Earth, weightlessness giving way to increasing “G” loads as the vehicle rapidly slowed during re-entry.
Finally, back in the dense lower atmosphere, Unity’s two wings rotated back down to their normal positions and the pilots manually flew the spaceplane through a spiraling glide to landing on Spaceport America’s 12,000-foot-long runway. Total time between Unity’s air launch and landing: just under 14 minutes.
Virgin has now launched 25 people to the edge of space, several of them more than once, including Masucci, making his fourth flight, and Bennett, making his second. Arch rival Blue Origin, owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has launched 32 people on six sub-orbital spaceflights using its more traditional New Shepard booster and capsule.
The competition between the two companies in the space tourism marketplace has been fierce.
Virgin’s first space flight came in 2018 when two company pilots flew Unity to an altitude of 51 miles. That initial launch to space came four years after a catastrophic test flight that destroyed Virgin’s original spaceplane, killed the co-pilot and seriously injured the pilot when the feather mechanism was unlocked earlier than planned.
After addressing that issue, Virgin launched four successful test flights in a row before standing down for two years to upgrade the Eve carrier jet and carry out more modifications. A fifth successful test flight on May 25 cleared the way for Thursday’s launch.
Blue Origin, meanwhile, began commercial operations in 2021. But the company’s most recent launch in September 2022, an uncrewed research flight, experienced a booster malfunction and while the capsule’s abort system operated as planned and the ship landed successfully, launches currently are on hold.
The six-member crew of Blue Origin’s fifth flight in June 2022 included Hamish Harding, a billionaire pilot and explorer who was killed along with four others when the submersible Titan imploded June 18 during a commercial dive to view the wreckage of the Titanic. The mishap has raised fresh questions about the risks of private ventures into inherently dangerous environments.
Commercial spaceflight is monitored by the Federal Aviation Administration, which is responsible for licensing and ensuring minimal risk to the public. But legislation forbids the FAA from regulating crew safety procedures during a so-called “learning period” as as the commercial space market matures. Instead, passengers must provide “informed consent” that they understand the risks.
That learning period expires October 1, and the FAA is considering steps it might take if Congress does not extend the deadline.
“This includes the establishment of an Aerospace Rulemaking Committee to provide recommendations on the scope and costs of future regulations,” the FAA said in a statement. “The FAA also is updating its recommended practices for human spaceflight occupant safety and is working with international organizations to develop voluntary consensus standards.”
Bill Harwood has been covering the U.S. space program full-time since 1984, first as Cape Canaveral bureau chief for United Press International and now as a consultant for CBS News. He covered 129 space shuttle missions, every interplanetary flight since Voyager 2’s flyby of Neptune and scores of commercial and military launches. Based at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Harwood is a devoted amateur astronomer and co-author of “Comm Check: The Final Flight of Shuttle Columbia.”
SpaceX launched a powerful Indonesian communications satellite Sunday, the linchpin in a $550 million project to provide high-speed internet access to schools, medical centers and thousands of public and government facilities across the island nation.
Using a first stage making its 12th flight, the Falcon 9 rocket roared to life at 6:21 p.m. EDT and shot away from pad 40 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, arcing to the east over the Atlantic Ocean and quickly disappearing from view.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 blasts off on a Father’s Day flight to put a powerful Indonesian communications satellite into orbit, boosting broadband access across thousands of islands in the vast archipelago.
William Harwood/CBS News
After jettisoning the first stage, which flew itself to a pinpoint landing on an offshore droneship, the second stage’s single engine fired twice to reach the planned elliptical deploy orbit, releasing the 10,100-pound SATRIA satellite to fly on its own about 37 minutes after launch.
Built by Thales Alenia Space, the satellite will use onboard ion thrusters to circularize its orbit at an altitude of 22,300 miles above the equator at 126 degrees east longitude.
Satellites at that geosynchronous altitude take 24 hours to complete one orbit, rotating in lockstep with Earth to appear stationary in the sky. That allows the use of fixed antennas on the ground, greatly simplifying the infrastructure needed to send and receive data.
SATRIA is a public-private project between the government of Indonesia and a consortium led by satellite operator PT Pasifik Satelit Nusantara, or PSN.
The SATRIA satellite drifts away from the Falcon 9’s second stage after successfully reaching orbit. After its solar arrays are deployed, the five-ton spacecraft will use electric ion thrusters to reach its final orbit 22,300 miles above the equator over Indonesia.
SpaceX
With a throughput of 150 gigabytes per second, SATRIA will connect some 94,000 schools, nearly 50,000 village offices, other government facilities and thousands of hospitals and medical facilities across the vast archipelago, the fourth most populous country in the world.
Going into Sunday’s launch, Indonesia relied on five domestic communications satellites and and four “foreign” relay stations with a combined 50 gigabytes of telecommunications bandwith.
“With a capacity of 150 Gbps, (SATRIA) can provide more than three times the combined national capacities that are currently in use,” Adi Rahman Adiwoso, chief executive officer of PSN, was quoted by SpaceTechAsia. “We are confident that SATRIA can be the solution to the digital gap that still exists in Indonesia.”
The satellite is designed to operate for at least 15 years.
Sunday’s launch was SpaceX’s 41st Falcon-family flight so far this year, the fifth this month and the company’s 245th overall, including five Falcon 1 rockets, six Falcon Heavies and one Super Heavy-Starship.
Bill Harwood has been covering the U.S. space program full-time since 1984, first as Cape Canaveral bureau chief for United Press International and now as a consultant for CBS News. He covered 129 space shuttle missions, every interplanetary flight since Voyager 2’s flyby of Neptune and scores of commercial and military launches. Based at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Harwood is a devoted amateur astronomer and co-author of “Comm Check: The Final Flight of Shuttle Columbia.”
The modified Boeing 747 plane, named “Cosmic Girl”, will take off from Spaceport Cornwall in southwest England.
Hugh Hastings / Stringer / Getty Images
Bankrupt rocket company Virgin Orbit is shutting down, after selling its facility leases and equipment to a trio of aerospace companies in an auction, the company confirmed on Tuesday.
“As Virgin Orbit embarks on this path, the management and employees would like to extend their heartfelt gratitude to all stakeholders,” the company said in a statement.
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“Virgin Orbit’s legacy in the space industry will forever be remembered. Its groundbreaking technologies, relentless pursuit of excellence, and unwavering commitment to advancing the frontiers of air launch have left an indelible mark on the industry,” the company added.
The rocket for the company’s second demonstration mission undergoing final assembly at its factory in Long Beach, California.
Virgin Orbit
Monday’s auction bids amount to about $36 million in total. Virgin Orbit’s six or so rockets that were in various stages of manufacturing assembly, and its intellectual property, have yet to be sold, a Virgin Orbit spokesperson confirmed.
Rocket Lab successfully bid $16.1 million for the company’s headquarters in Long Beach, California, which is about 140,000 square feet, the spokesperson said. Although founded in New Zealand, Rocket Lab was already a neighbor of Virgin Orbit, with a headquarters and facilities in the Long Beach area. Additionally, Rocket Lab’s purchase includes assets such as 3D-printers and a specialty tank welding machine.
Stratolaunch was awarded its $17 million “stalking horse” bid for Virgin Orbit’s 747 jet. A Stratolaunch spokesperson, in a statement to CNBC, said the company “continually evaluates ways to increase our capacity to meet the imperative for testing hypersonic technologies via leap-ahead flight demonstrations.”
“We will share more news about the sale as it becomes available,” Stratolaunch noted.
Launcher, a subsidiary of Vast Space, is purchasing the company’s facility in Mojave, California — as well as some machinery, equipment and inventory — for $2.7 million. Virgin Orbit’s Mojave leases include infrastructure such as rocket-engine test stands and an aircraft hangar.
A liquidation company, Inliper, is purchasing the company’s office equipment for $650,000.
Rocket Lab and Launcher did not immediately respond to CNBC requests for comment.
Previously in the bankruptcy process, Virgin Orbit agreed to the terms of Stratolaunch’s bid, which was to purchase the 747 jet “Cosmic Girl” and other aircraft assets. Stratolaunch has been developing its own airborne system, the world’s largest airplane called “Roc,” as a platform for hypersonic flight testing.
Virgin Orbit filed for bankruptcy protection on April 4 after the company failed to secure a funding lifeline and laid off nearly its entire workforce. The auction outcome falls short of Virgin Orbit’s goal in the Chapter 11 bankruptcy process, which was to find a wholesale buyer that would keep the company’s assets and intellectual property intact.
The bankruptcy court is set to approve the sales in a hearing on Wednesday at 2 p.m. ET.
Rocket Lab launched two toaster-size satellites for NASA on Sunday, the first of four “cubesats” designed to provide hourly updates of typhoon and hurricane development in a bid to improve forecasting and provide new insights into how tropical storms evolve and intensify.
An Electron rocket blasts off from Rocket Lab’s picturesque Mahia, New Zealand, launch site, carrying two small NASA satellites designed to monitor tropical storm development.
Rocket Lab
“The threat to our friends and neighbors is real and repeats every year,” said Ben Kim, a program executive with NASA’s Earth Science Division. The TROPICS mission, he said, “aims to improve our scientific understanding by obtaining microwave observations that allow us to see the inner structure of these storms approximately hourly.
“These observations will complement the existing weather satellites, and ultimately then can be tied to the broader understanding of the entire earth system.”
TROPICS, one of NASA’s more convoluted acronyms, stands for Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation Structure and Storm Intensity with a Constellation of Smallsats. The bargain-basement $30 million mission takes advantage of miniaturized electronics and the evolution of cubesats capable of taking on big-ticket science.
The cubesats aren’t intended to replace larger, much more powerful and much more expensive weather satellites. But they offer a low-cost way to augment those “flagship” missions with complementary science and much shorter development times
“We utilize a balanced mission portfolio that ranges from the really large observatories, like Landsat 9 at around 6,000 pounds, down to the very smallest of satellites like TROPICS at around 12 pounds,” Kim said.
“This mix within our portfolio allows us to maximize the science per taxpayer dollar, and thus do more science than if we only focus on the large missions.”
The first two of six planned TROPICS cubesats were lost last year when their Astra rocket failed during the climb to space. NASA then moved the four remaining cubesats to Rocket Lab’s more reliable Electron in order to get them into orbit in time for this year’s tropical storm season.
Running about a week late because of stormy weather, the first of the two remaining missions got off to a picture-perfect start at 9 p.m. EDT Sunday with launch from Rocket Lab’s picturesque Mahia, New Zealand, launch site.
An artist’s impression of a NASA TROPICS satellite studying a tropical storm from orbit. Four such satellites will enable hourly passes over developing storms to help scientists learn more about how storms develop and evolve.
NASA
The 59-foot-tall carbon-composite rocket’s nine 3D-printed Rutherford engines pushed the booster out of the lower atmosphere before falling away and handing off to the rocket’s second stage, which put the craft into an initial parking orbit nine-and-a-half minutes after liftoff.
A third “kick” stage then finished the job, releasing TROPICS 3 and 4 to fly on their own about 33 minutes after launch. It was Rocket Lab’s 36th Electron launch and its 16th successful flight in a row.
If all goes well, Rocket Lab will launch TROPICS 5 and 6 before the end of the month to complete a four-satellite constellation. All four satellites will operate in 341-mile-high orbits carrying them about 30 degrees to either side of the equator, ideal for “revisit” observations of developing storms on an hourly basis.
William Blackwell, the TROPICS principal investigator at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory, said getting microwave observations of growing storms, at the rapid revisit rates the cubesats provide, is critical to understanding the development and behavior of tropical storms. . “We’ve been making (such observations) for 40 years from space, but the thing that has eluded us is this ability to capture the dynamics of the storm,” he said. “So this new hourly cadence that we’ll get with the constellation is really going to push us forward in terms of what the observations are able to do to explain how things are changing in the storm.”
The observations, in concert with data collected by larger, more powerful weather satellites, are expected to “improve understanding of the basic processes that drive the storms and ultimately improve our ability to forecast track and intensity.”
Bill Harwood has been covering the U.S. space program full-time since 1984, first as Cape Canaveral bureau chief for United Press International and now as a consultant for CBS News. He covered 129 space shuttle missions, every interplanetary flight since Voyager 2’s flyby of Neptune and scores of commercial and military launches. Based at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Harwood is a devoted amateur astronomer and co-author of “Comm Check: The Final Flight of Shuttle Columbia.”
After multiple delays for weather and technical issues, SpaceX finally launched a Falcon Heavy rocket Sunday carrying a competitor’s internet satellite, the first of three next-generation data relay stations capable of terabyte-per-second performance.
After a final hour-long delay because of gusty winds, SpaceX’s most powerful operational rocket flashed to life at 8:26 p.m. EDT and climbed away from historic pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center atop more than 5 million pounds of thrust.
SpaceX launched its sixth Falcon Heavy rocket Sunday, using the company’s most powerful operational booster to put a third-generation ViaSat internet satellite into orbit along with two smaller hitchhiker satellites.
William Harwood/CBS News
Powered by 27 Merlin engines in three strapped-together Falcon 9 first stage boosters, the Falcon Heavy quickly accelerated as it consumed its kerosene and liquid oxygen propellants and lost weight. After initially climbing straight up, the rocket arced over on an easterly trajectory, putting on a spectacular early-evening show for area residents and tourists.
SpaceX normally recovers first stage boosters for refurbishment and reuse, but all of the available propellant was needed Sunday to boost the 13,000-pound ViaSat-3 satellite into its planned orbit.
As a result, all three core stages were discarded to fall into the ocean more than 50 miles below after pushing the rocket out of the lower atmosphere.
The single engine powering the Falcon Heavy’s upper stage shut down eight minutes after launch, putting the vehicle in an initial parking orbit. Two more firings were planned over the next three hours and 44 minutes to get the satellite into the planned geosynchronous orbit 22,300 miles above the equator.
A close-up view of launch from historic pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center.
SpaceX
Sunday’s flight capped an intense few days for SpaceX, which launched 46 of its own low-altitude Starlink internet satellites from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Thursday. The company then launched two medium-altitude broadband satellites for Luxembourg-based SES from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Friday.
All three launchings highlight the ongoing race to deploy space-based internet relay stations to provide broadband access to customers anywhere in the world, including rural, hard-to-reach or under-served areas, as well as aircraft and ships at sea.
The Starlink satellites are part of a fast-growing constellation of small, low-altitude laser-linked satellites designed, built and operated by SpaceX to provide high-speed, low-latency internet to users anywhere in the world.
Thousands of Starlinks are required to ensure that multiple fast-moving satellites are above a user’s horizon at any given moment to provide uninterrupted service. The satellites receive user inputs, and send those to nearby Starlinks for relay to “gateway” ground stations connected to high-speed data lines. Responses are then passed along back to the user.
An artist’s impression of a ViaSat-3 internet relay satellite in orbit, with its huge mesh antenna deployed to enable high-speed data transfers.
ViaSat
ViaSat is taking a different approach, stationing satellites in 22,300 mile-high-orbits above the equator where they rotate in lockstep with the planet below and thus appear stationary in the sky. Three such ViaSat-3 satellites are planned to provide global space-based internet access on hemispheric scales.
The powerful satellites are equipped with huge solar panels generating 25 kilowatts of power and stretching 144 feet from tip to tip when fully unfolded.
Capable of handling up to 1 terabyte of data per second, the satellites are equipped with the largest dish antenna ever launched on a commercial satellite. Once on station, the huge mesh reflector will unfold atop an 80- to 90-foot-long telescoping boom based on technology developed for the James Webb Space Telescope.
If all goes well, the first ViaSat-3 will provide internet access to customers in the Western Hemisphere starting this summer. Two more satellites, covering Europe, Africa, Asia and the Pacific, are expected to launch over the next two years.
“If you are a low-Earth orbit (provider), by definition, in order to stay up in orbit, you’re going to be screaming across the sky fairly fast. So your terminal on the ground has to be more complicated … and more expensive,” David Ryan, president of space and commercial networks at ViaSat, told CBS News.
“The other advantage of geosynchronous orbit is that you can see a third of the Earth with one satellite. So with one launch, one satellite, you potentially can connect to a third of the Earth. And that’s the principle behind ViaSat-3.”
Bill Harwood has been covering the U.S. space program full-time since 1984, first as Cape Canaveral bureau chief for United Press International and now as a consultant for CBS News. He covered 129 space shuttle missions, every interplanetary flight since Voyager 2’s flyby of Neptune and scores of commercial and military launches. Based at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Harwood is a devoted amateur astronomer and co-author of “Comm Check: The Final Flight of Shuttle Columbia.”
SpaceX fired off two SES broadband communications satellites from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Friday atop a Falcon 9 rocket, and then tried to launch a ViaSat internet relay station from the nearby Kennedy Space Center aboard a triple-core Falcon Heavy booster. However, a last-minute glitch triggered a frustrating abort at the end of the launch window.
SpaceX tweeted that the ViaSat payload, and the rocket — the company’s most powerful operational booster — were healthy and that another launch opportunity was available Saturday. But no details were provided, and it wasn’t immediately known if whatever went wrong could be fixed in time to permit a 24-hour turnaround.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blasts off from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station carrying two broadband relay satellites, the third and fourth launched by the California rocket builder for Luxembourg-based SES.
SpaceX
The scrub capped an especially busy day in space, with the first launch coming just two hours after NASA astronaut Stephen Bowen and United Arab Emirates astronaut Sultan Alneyadi completed a 7-hour and one-minute spacewalk outside the International Space Station to make preparations for installation of roll-out solar blankets in June to augment the lab’s aging power system.
The spacewalkers also tried to bring in a degraded communications antenna back to Earth for refurbishment, but they were foiled by a jammed bolt and were forced to leave it in place to await another attempt on a future spacewalk. It was the eighth spacewalk for Bowen, who now ranks 10th on the list of most experienced spacewalkers, and the first for Alneyadi.
“Sultan, you’ve now entered an exclusive club of humans who have stepped out into the void of space and in doing so, you’ve marked a milestone for the United Arab Emirates,” astronaut Anne McClain radioed from mission control in Houston. “Congratulations to you both.”
Astronauts Stephen Bowen, left, and United Arab Emirates astronaut Sultan Alneyadi, right, are seen after a failed attempt to retrieve a degraded 145-pound antenna assembly, center, for return to Earth, refurbishment and relaunch. A stuck bolt prevented the unit’s removal from a stowage platform. NASA likely will make another attempt during a future spacewalk.
NASA
Alneyadi, the first Arab astronaut to make both a long-duration flight aboard the ISS and a spacewalk, thanked NASA and the leadership of both countries for the opportunity, saying “it’s a great moment for the UAE.”
“It might be a first in the Arab world, but it definitely won’t be the last,” he said. “We have astronauts under training now to undergo missions to the ISS, to the lunar surface and to Mars. I would like to thank everone who helped getting us to this moment.”
Back on Earth, SpaceX was in the midst of gearing up for a dramatic doubleheader, and what would have been the shortest time between two orbit-class launches since 1966. It also would have been the company’s second and third launches in just two days.
SpaceX tried to launch a Falcon Heavy rocket Friday evening, but a last-minute abort foiled the company’s attempt to launch two rockets within a little more than two hours of each other, the shortest time between two orbit-class launches since 1966. But it was not to be.
SpaceX
On Thursday, a Falcon 9 boosted 46 Starlink internet satellites into space from California, but stormy weather in Florida blocked an attempt to get the Falcon Heavy off the ground carrying the first of three ViaSat broadband relay stations.
Despite another gloomy forecast, the ViaSat launch was reset for Friday, shortly after another Falcon 9 launch from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station to put the two SES 03b mPOWER medium-altitude internet satellites into orbit.
That flight got off the ground at 6:12 p.m. EDT using a first stage making its second flight. Two hours later, the two SES satellites were released to fly on their own as another SpaceX team was fueling the Falcon Heavy for liftoff at 8:26 p.m. SpaceX had hoped to launch the Heavy at 7:29 p.m., but the flight was re-targeted for the end of the launch window because of weather.
Everything appeared to be going smoothly as the countdown ticked into its final minutes. Then, at T-minus 59 seconds, when the rocket’s flight computer began final checks, the clock stopped and the countdown was aborted. SpaceX provided no immediate explanation, other than to say another launch opportunity was available Saturday.
Thursday’s Starlink launch, the SES flight Friday and the eventual launch of ViaSat’s third-generation satellites, highlight the ongoing competition to deploy internet relay stations in space to provide broadband access to customers anywhere in the world, including rural, hard-to-reach or under-served areas, as well as aircraft and ships at sea that cannot be serviced by traditional suppliers.
The satellites illustrate the different architectures being employed, from multi-thousand satellite constellations in low-Earth orbit like SpaceX’s Starlink initiative — 4,284 Starlinks have been launched to date — to ViaSat’s plan to launch a handful of much more powerful, high-altitude satellites that can provide broadband access on hemispheric scales.
How those competing architectures will play out is anyone’s guess, but the rush to stake out a claim on that high frontier is heating up.
Bill Harwood has been covering the U.S. space program full-time since 1984, first as Cape Canaveral bureau chief for United Press International and now as a consultant for CBS News. He covered 129 space shuttle missions, every interplanetary flight since Voyager 2’s flyby of Neptune and scores of commercial and military launches. Based at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Harwood is a devoted amateur astronomer and co-author of “Comm Check: The Final Flight of Shuttle Columbia.”
Virgin Orbit started as a program of Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic in 2012, before being spun off into a separate company five years later.
In the private space race, Virgin Orbit contended its method of launching its rockets — known as “air launch” — was more flexible than traditional launch pads used by competitors like Rocket Lab, Astra and SpaceX.
The company employed a modified Boeing 747 jet that it called “Cosmic Girl” to carry its LauncherOne rocket to about 35,000 feet of altitude before dropping it.
From there, the rocket would fire its engines and fly off into space.
“By launching from an aircraft, Virgin could take off from almost any airport around the world and turn these airports into space ports,” said Caleb Henry, director of research at Quilty Analytics.
Henry noted that the Virgin Orbit’s last launch was from the United Kingdom, and that the company was in discussions to launch in Japan and Brazil.
“They were offering to different countries the ability to, in a sense, have a sovereign launch capability, because the rocket would take off from their home soil,” Henry said.
But Virgin Orbit was dogged by delays. The company originally hoped to launch its debut mission in 2018, but didn’t get off the ground until May of 2020. The demonstration mission failed shortly after the rocket was released. In total, the company launched six missions, four of which were successful and two of which failed, including the last one in January.
Virgin Orbit’s biggest deal was a 39-launch contract signed with satellite maker OneWeb in 2015. OneWeb ultimately pulled out of the deal without conducting a single launch.
“A challenge for the company, and for any launch company, is having an anchor customer, somebody who you can depend on to routinely buy a decent number of launches,” Henry said. “Virgin Orbit did not have an anchor customer.”
In late March, Virgin Orbit said it was laying off the majority of its workforce and ceasing operations “for the foreseeable future” after failing to secure a funding lifeline. Days later, the company filed for bankruptcy.
Watch the video to find out more about what led to Virgin Orbit’s collapse.
Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after a failed mission this year and increasing difficulty in raising funding for future missions.
The company laid off most of its staff on Friday and told the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware in a filing Tuesday that it was looking to sell its assets.
Virgin Orbit said that it has secured $31.6 million in debtor-in-possession financing from Branson’s Virgin Investments Ltd.
Virgin Orbit CEO Dan Hart said that once the financing is approved by the bankruptcy court, the funds are expected to provide Virgin Orbit with the necessary liquidity to continue operating as it attempts to sell the company.
“While we have taken great efforts to address our financial position and secure additional financing, we ultimately must do what is best for the business,” Hart said.
The Long Beach, California, company said in its bankruptcy filing that it has between 200 and 999 estimated creditors. It had approximately $243 million in total assets and $153.5 million in total liabilities as of Sept. 30, according to a regulatory filing.
Last week Virgin Orbit said that it was cutting 675 jobs, about 85% of its workforce. Shortly before the announcement, the company said that it was pausing all operations amid reports of possible job cuts. At the time Virgin Orbit confirmed that it was putting all work on hold, but didn’t say for how long.
In January, a mission by Virgin Orbit to launch the first satellites into orbit from Europe failed after a rocket’s upper stage prematurely shut down. It was a setback in the United Kingdom which had hoped that the launch from Cornwall in southwest England would mark the beginning of more commercial opportunities for the U.K. space industry.
The company said in February that an investigation found that its rocket’s fuel filter had become dislodged, causing an engine to become overheated and other components to malfunction over the Atlantic Ocean.
Virgin Orbit, which is listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange, was founded in 2017 by British billionaire Branson to target the market for launching small satellites into space. Its LauncherOne rockets are launched from the air from modified Virgin passenger planes, allowing the company to operate more flexibly than using fixed launch sites.
Shares of Virgin Orbit Holdings Inc., which traded above $10 about two years ago, tumbled 24% before the opening bell Tuesday, to about 15 cents.
Virgin Orbit, the satellite launch company founded by Richard Branson, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and will sell the business, the firm said in a statement Tuesday.
The California-based company said last week it was laying off 85 percent of its employees — around 675 people — to reduce expenses due to its inability to secure sufficient funding.
Virgin Orbit suffered a major setback earlier this year when an attempt to launch the first rocket into space from British soil ended in failure.
The company had organized the mission with the UK Space Agency and Cornwall Spaceport to launch nine satellites into space.
On Tuesday, the firm said “it commenced a voluntary proceeding under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code … in order to effectuate a sale of the business” and intended to use the process “to maximize value for its business and assets.”
Last month, Virgin Orbit suspended operations for several days while it held funding negotiations and explored strategic opportunities.
But at an all-hands meeting on Thursday, CEO Dan Hart told employees operations would cease “for the foreseeable future,” US media reported at the time.
“While we have taken great efforts to address our financial position and secure additional financing, we ultimately must do what is best for the business,” Hart said in the company statement on Tuesday.
“We believe that the cutting-edge launch technology that this team has created will have wide appeal to buyers as we continue in the process to sell the Company.”
Founded by Branson in 2017, the firm developed “a new and innovative method of launching satellites into orbit,” while “successfully launching 33 satellites into their precise orbit,” Hart added.
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Virgin Orbit crew poses at the opening bell ceremony as a 70 foot model rocket with satellites is placed in front of the NASDAQ in Times Square of New York City, United States on January 7, 2022.
Tayfun Coskun | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
Not too long ago, Virgin Orbit was in rarified air among U.S. rocket builders, and executives were in New York celebrating its public stock debut.
The scene was true to the marketing pizazz that has helped Sir Richard Branson build his Virgin empire of companies, showcasing with a rocket model in the middle of Times Square.
The deal, facilitated by a so-called blank check company, gave Virgin Orbit a valuation of nearly $4 billion. But that moment in December 2021 – when the craze surrounding public offerings centered on special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, was dying out – previewed the pain to come.
Now, Virgin Orbit is on the brink of bankruptcy. The company on Thursday halted operations and laid off nearly all of its staff. Its stock was trading around 20 cents Friday, leaving it with a market value of about $74 million.
When Virgin Orbit closed its SPAC deal, it raised less than half of the nearly $500 million expected due to high shareholder redemptions, shortening its runway. With the broader markets turning against riskier yet-unprofitable assets like many new space stocks, Virgin Orbit shares began a steady slide, further limiting its ability to raise substantial outside investment.
Branson, Virgin Orbit’s largest stakeholder, was unwilling to fund the company further, as CNBC previously reported. Instead, he began hedging against his 75% equity stake through a series of debt rounds. That debt gives the flashy British billionaire first priority of Virgin Orbit assets in the event of the now-impending bankruptcy.
While Virgin Orbit touted a flexible and alternative approach to launch small satellites, the company was unable to reach the rate of launches necessary to generate the revenue it sorely needed.
Virgin Orbit’s technical staff acquitted themselves well over the company’s brief existence, but were ultimately undone in by its leaders’ financial mismanagement. It’s a story too often told in the history of the space industry: Exciting, or even innovative, technologies do not necessarily equal great businesses.
It became one of a few U.S. rocket companies to successfully reach orbit with a privately developed launch vehicle. It launched six missions since 2020 — with four successes and two failures — through an ambitious and technically difficult process known as “air launch,” with a system that uses a modified 747 jet to drop a rocket mid-flight and send small satellites into space.
But Virgin Orbit had dug a nearly $1 billion hole, flying missions just twice a year while its payroll expenses climbed. The company’s leadership was aware of the deteriorating situation and lack of progress, and even considered changes last summer to make the business more lean. But no clear or dramatic plan came to fruition – leading to Thursday’s fall.
This story collects insights from CNBC’s discussions with company insiders and industry investors over the past several weeks, as well as from regulatory disclosures, to explain where things went wrong for Virgin Orbit. Those people asked to remain anonymous in order to discuss internal or competitive matters.
A Virgin Orbit spokesperson declined to comment for this story.
The company’s 747 jet “Cosmic Girl” releases a LauncherOne rocket in mid-air for the first time during a drop test in July 2019.
Greg Robinson / Virgin Orbit
Virgin Orbit was spun-off from Branson’s space tourism company, Virgin Galactic, in 2017, after a team within the latter sister company saw potential in using an aircraft as a platform to launch satellites. While “air launching” satellites was not a novel idea to Virgin Orbit, the company aimed to surpass the air-launched Pegasus rocket – developed by Orbital Sciences, which is now owned by Northrop Grumman –for a fraction of the cost per mission.
Headquartered in Long Beach, California, Virgin Orbit flew most of its missions out of the Mojave Air and Space Port. The exception to that was its most recent launch, which took off from Spaceport Cornwall in the United Kingdom. Virgin Orbit had been working with other governments to provide launches by flying out of airports around the world, signing agreements with Japan, Brazil, Australia and the island of Guam.
The advertised flexibility and potential of Virgin Orbit’s approach attracted quite a bit of attention from leaders in the U.S. national security community. Following meetings with top Pentagon brass in 2019, Branson proclaimed that Virgin Orbit is “about the only company in the world that could replace [satellites] in 24 hours” during a military conflict.
At the time, the Air Force’s acquisition lead, Will Roper, said he was “very excited about small launch” after meeting with Branson. He said the U.S. military had “huge money to invest” in buying rocket launches.
The company had hoped to launch its debut mission as early as 2018, but that goal kept moving every six months or so. Eventually, Virgin Orbit launched its first mission in May 2020, which failed shortly after the rocket was released from the jet. It got to orbit successfully for the first time in January 2021.
Given the company’s burn rate near $50 million a quarter, Virgin Orbit was targeting profitability once it got beyond a launch rate, or cadence, of a dozen missions per year. When it went public, Virgin Orbit CEO Dan Hart told CNBC that the company was aiming to launch seven rockets in 2022, to build on that momentum.
At the same time, Virgin Orbit was already in a deep financial hole – with a total deficit of $821 million at the end of 2021, due to steady losses since its inception. While Virgin Orbit had aimed to launch seven missions last year, that number was steadily guided down quarter after quarter, closing out 2022 with just two completed lunches – the same as the year before.
Some people within the company who had been critical of Virgin Orbit’s execution pointed to several executives’ backgrounds at Boeing, which has had its share of space-related snags over the years.
Virgin Orbit CEO Dan Hart had spent 34 years at Boeing, where he was previously the vice president of its government space systems. COO Tony Gingiss joined Virgin Orbit from satellite broadband company OneWeb, but before that had spent 14 years in Boeing’s satellite division. And Chief Strategy Officer Jim Simpson had also spent more than eight years in Boeing’s satellite division before joining Virgin Orbit.
As one person emphasized, the company launched the same amount of rockets in a year with a staff of 500 as it did with a workforce of over 750 people. Others complained of a lack of cross-department coordination, with projects and spending done in silo of each other – leading to a disconnect in schedules.
Two people mentioned wastefulness in ordering materials. For example: The company would buy enough expensive items with limited shelf-life to build a dozen or more rockets, but then only build two, meaning it would have to throw away millions of dollars’ worth of raw materials away.
When Virgin Orbit announced an employee furlough March 15, people familiar with the situation said the company had about half a dozen rockets in various states of production in its Long Beach factory.
As the lack of a financial lifeline made the situation increasingly more desperate, multiple Virgin Orbit employees voiced frustration with how Hart communicated the company’s position – and even more so with the lack of clarity after the furlough.
The day of the initial pause in operations, people described company leadership running around frantically while many employees stood around waiting for word on what was happening. One person emphasized the tumultuous and sudden furlough happened because executives tried to keep the company alive as long as possible. Several employees expressed disappointment with Hart holding the March 15 all-hands meeting virtually, speaking from his office rather than face-to-face, and not taking any questions after announcing the pause in operations.
That frustration continued after the pause, with employees confused by the lack of specifics about which investors were speaking to Virgin Orbit leadership. Thursday’s update that a deal fell through came as little surprise to a workforce that was largely in limbo. Many were already hunting for new jobs.
The rocket for the company’s second demonstration mission undergoing final assembly at its factory in Long Beach, California.
Virgin Orbit
A pivot in Virgin Orbit’s strategy became apparent and necessary shortly after it went public.
Virgin Orbit aimed to raise $483 million through its SPAC process, but significant redemptions meant it raised less than half of that, bringing in $228 million in gross proceeds. The funds it did raise came from the minority of SPAC shareholders who stuck around, as well as private investments from Virgin Group, the Emirati sovereign wealth fund Mubadala, Boeing, and AE Industrial Partners.
Unlike its sister company Virgin Galactic, which built its cash reserves to more than $1 billion through stock and debt sales after going public in October 2019, Virgin Orbit did not build its cash coffers. And that meant leadership should have buckled down and made changes to run the company in a more lean way, one person emphasized, to rebuild momentum.
And then Virgin Orbit’s apparent strength in the national security sector began to falter. Despite half of its missions flying Space Force satellites, the company lost out to competitor Firefly Aerospace for a launch contract under the “Tactically Responsive Space” program. Awarded in October, the mission seemed right up Virgin Orbit’s alley, especially since the prior mission under that Space Force program flew on the similarly air-launched Pegasus rocket.
As the financial situation worsened, a few bankers who spoke to CNBC wondered why the search for a deal was dragging on. According to one banker, Virgin Orbit could raise anywhere from $10 million to $15 million quickly to stop-gap the situation while it found a larger buyer. Another investor estimated that Virgin Orbit had about $270 million in net tangible assets, further sweetening the potential for a wholesale deal even despite its plunging market value.
A white knight seemed to appear last week in the form of Matthew Brown, who discussed making an 11th-hour deal with Virgin Orbit, to reportedly inject as much as $200 million into the company. However, within days, the talks fell apart. The company continued to discussions with another, unnamed investor this past week.
But in the words of Hart on Thursday, Virgin Orbit was “not been able to secure the funding to provide a clear path for this company.”
And while the 675 employees laid off Thursday likely have strong job prospects, Virgin Orbit seems now destined for bankruptcy.
Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit is letting go of almost its entire work force with the satellite launch company finding it difficult to secure funding three months after a failed mission.
The company, headquartered in Long Beach, California, will cut 675 jobs, about 85% of its workforce, according to a Friday filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Earlier this month, Virgin Orbit said that it was pausing all operations amid reports that the company would furlough most of its staff. At the time the company confirmed that it was putting all work on hold, but didn’t say for how long.
In January, a mission by Virgin Orbit to launch the first satellites into orbit from Europe failed after a rocket’s upper stage prematurely shut down. It was a setback in the United Kingdom which had hoped that the launch from Cornwall in southwest England would mark the beginning of more commercial opportunities for the U.K. space industry.
The company said in February that an investigation found that its rocket’s fuel filter had become dislodged, causing an engine to become overheated and other components to malfunction over the Atlantic Ocean.
Virgin Orbit has completed four successful satellite launches so far from California for a mix of commercial and U.S. government defense uses.
Virgin Orbit said in a regulatory filing on Friday that the job cuts will occur in all areas of the company.
It expects about $15.5 million in charges related to the job cuts, with the majority of the charges taking place in the first quarter. The company anticipates $8.8 million in severance payments and employee benefits costs and $6.5 million in other employee-related costs.
Virgin Orbit anticipates the job cuts being mostly complete by Monday.
Virgin Orbit, which is listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange, was founded in 2017 by British billionaire Richard Branson to target the market for launching small satellites into space. Its LauncherOne rockets are launched from the air from modified Virgin passenger planes, allowing the company to operate more flexibly than using fixed launch sites.
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