BORIS Johnson was awkwardly photoshopped out of a picture posted to mark the Virgin Orbit rocket launch this morning.
Business Secretary Grant Shapps was left red-faced after it emerged his former boss was removed from a snap in a major gaffe.
On Sunday Mr Shapps tweeted an old photo of himself with the Virgin Orbit rocket that blasted off from Cornwall Spaceport last night.
But in a major snub, missing from the picture was ex-PM BoJo, who had been shoddily airbrushed out from a photo dated June 9, 2021.
Alongside the pic the Tweet said: “The UK Govt is delighted to be backing the FIRST ever satellite launch from European soil. Lift-off scheduled for Monday at Spaceport Cornwall, Newquay.”
This morning eagle eyed social media users noticed the photo had been tampered with and even hunted down the original image that included BoJo.
When the airbrushing was pointed out on Twitter the picture was quickly deleted.
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A source close to Mr Shapps denied he had any knowledge of the picture tampering and said it was a complete accident and nothing to do with him.
The source said: "Grant wasn’t aware anyone had edited the picture. He removed it as soon as it was pointed out.
"Obviously he wouldn’t endorse anyone rewriting history by removing the former PM from a picture. He was proud to serve in Boris Johnson’s Government".
Britain’s £10million attempt to make history as the first European country to launch a rocket into space from home turf flopped last night.
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The LauncherOne rocket successfully blasted off but suffered “an anomaly” which stopped it from reaching orbit at the last moment.
Rocket company Virgin Orbit had wrongly tweeted out that it reached Earth’s orbit before suddenly admitting it failed, adding: “We are evaluating the information.”
LauncherOne piggy-backed on Virgin Orbit’s 747 plane, known as Cosmic Girl, called Cosmic Girl from Newquay, Cornwall, before dropping off over the Atlantic.
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It was then supposed to blast off into space to deploy nine small satellites intended for UK defence monitoring, while others were for firms such as those in navigational tech.
Cosmic Girl however successfully returned to Cornwall with its flight crew. It is thought Virgin Orbit charges around £10million for a launch, but fees can vary.
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