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Virgin Orbit, a Virgin Galactic spin-off, flew her LauncherOne rocket for the first time this Sunday, November 18th. The company conducted the test flight with the 21-meter rocket attached to the wing of a modified Boeing 747-400 dubbed the Cosmic Girl.
The 80-minute captive test flight took off from the Victorville, California, airport northeast of Los Angeles.
"Vehicles have flown like a dream today. All members of the flight crew and all our ground colleagues were extremely satisfied with the data of the instruments on board the aircraft, in the pylon and on the rocket itself. From my point of view in the cockpit, the vehicles have performed incredibly well and perfectly match what we were trained in the simulators, "Virgin Orbit chief driver Kelly Latimer said in a statement.
Cosmic girl
Virgin Orbit plans to use Cosmic Girl as a first-stage launch platform (sometimes called the mother ship) for the launch of rockets carrying satellites in low Earth orbit. The aircraft will fly the LauncherOne rocket at an altitude of 35,000 feet. The rocket will then be dropped and launched to launch light satellites, with a maximum payload of 1,100 pounds, into space.
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