In this day and age, the development and manufacture of spacecraft, along with the providence of space transportation services, has gradually been taken up by private enterprises. Even as the currently most prominent of these aerospace companies, Elon Musk’s SpaceX, has been making great strides with its line of reusable rocket launch vehicles and engines seeing use by NASA, one cannot discount the Virgin Group’s own aerospace arm. Virgin Orbit has been focused on perfecting its own rocket delivery system for launching satellites. Months after a failed launch attempt, a second launch that took place this Sunday, finally got results.
According to The Verge, Virgin Orbit successfully deployed its LauncherOne
satellite rocket on January 17. LauncherOne was taken airborne by a Boeing 747
customized as a high-altitude launch platform for Virgin Orbit, at around 1:30PM
ET from its launch site at the Mojave Air and Space Port, California. On a
later update at their official Twitter page, Virgin Orbit announced that their
747 “mothership” has reached the target launch altitude of 35,000 feet. At this
point the LauncherOne rocket, attached to the plane’s wing, was dropped and
ignited, reaching Earth orbit and deploying its payload of several satellites
without problems.
Payloads successfully deployed into our target orbit! We are so, so proud to say that LauncherOne has now completed its first mission to space, carrying 9 CubeSat missions into Low Earth Orbit for our friends @NASA. #LaunchDemo2
— Virgin Orbit (@Virgin_Orbit) January 17, 2021
This repeat attempt by Virgin
Orbit to deploy their LauncherOne rocket contrasted slightly to their initial
trial that took place last year in May 2020. The 747 carrier had reached 35,000
feet and deployed the rocket, only for it to fail in reaching escape velocity
into orbit. A later investigation had revealed that a liquid fuel line inside LauncherOne’s
first stage engine broke, causing a premature ignition shutdown. The problem
has since been corrected by Virgin Orbit and subjected to rigorous testing over
the past year despite the ongoing COVID-19 global pandemic, as noted by the
company’s CEO Dan Hart.
Speaking of COVID, the second
launch of the bug-fixed LauncherOne rocket was actually scheduled for this past
December, only to fall through after a number of personnel for Virgin Orbit’s
launch team at Mojave were subjected to precautionary quarantine. This too was
resolved with an intensified implementation of safety protocols, from the use
of PPEs to physical distancing, among others.
With its triumph this past
Sunday, Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne has been recorded by NASA as the first
successful launch of a liquid-fuel air-launched orbital rocket. Its payload for
this flight was an impressive 10 CubeSat mini-satellites developed by several
universities. Virgin Orbit is the sister company of Virgin Galactic, which
operates the refurbished Boeing 747 launch vehicle, nicknamed “Cosmic Girl.”
Image from ABC News
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