Virgin Orbit just won the orbit part of its name

On Sunday afternoon, Virgin Orbit joined the rare club of companies that privately developed a rocket and successfully launched it into orbit. Additionally, with its LauncherOne rocket dropped from a 747 aircraft, the California-based company became the first to reach orbit with an air-launched liquid-fuel rocket.

“This magnificent flight is the culmination of many years of hard work and will also unleash a whole new generation of innovators on the path to orbit,” said Sir Richard Branson, the founder of the company. “Virgin Orbit has achieved something that many thought was impossible.”

Sunday’s flight, which included several shots from the top-stage engine of LauncherOne and the successful deployment of several small satellites for NASA, caps a development program that has spanned about eight years and a myriad of technical challenges.

An airplane-launched rocket has some advantages over traditional ground-launched thrusters, including the flexibility to reach different orbits and the ability to take off in inclement weather. However, to achieve these benefits, Virgin Orbit had to design a liquid-fueled rocket that could be dropped horizontally from an airplane, ignite its engines, and quickly orient itself in a more vertical path. (Although Orbital Sciences developed the Pegasus rocket to be dropped from a carrier plane in the late 1980s, it was a simpler design using a solid thruster.)

A rocket dropped from an aircraft cannot ignite its engines immediately due to the proximity of the aircraft and its pilots. In the case of LauncherOne, the rocket’s NewtonThree engine is ignited 3.25 seconds after being jettisoned. The main engine starts for 5.2 seconds. During this time, the rocket falls and loses the acquired speed of the aircraft at about 30,000 feet.

Technical challenges

Due to this drag, negative acceleration acts on the thruster, causing all kinds of problems for both the rocket structure and its propulsion system. One problem is that this begins to force liquid oxygen and kerosene propellants up the tanks and the fill gas – which fills the tanks when the propellant is expended – toward the engine inlet.

The ignition process itself is also a challenge in the air. On the ground, a rocket usually fires its engines, and the on-board computer does a final quick check to make sure everything is healthy, before the rocket is launched. This is why take-off generally follows ignition for a few seconds. There’s no margin for error with Launcher One, because if the ignition doesn’t happen, the rocket simply falls into the ocean.

Image showing LauncherOne turning on after being dumped by her Cosmic girl plane.

Virgin orbit

The company and its engineers were able to overcome all of these problems and more with the design of their rocket. But it took time and a lot of money. Branson acknowledged that he and other investors had invested around $ 1 billion in Virgin Orbit, which is a lot of money to invest in a small satellite launcher, however innovative it may be. Ars explored Virgin Orbit’s avenues to profitability last year, and the road will not be easy.

But these are discussions for another day. Virgin Orbit reached orbit on its second flight on Sunday, with what appeared to be a pretty much flawless mission. Few companies have done this with vehicles developed by the private sector – very few in fact beyond Orbital Sciences, SpaceX and Rocket Lab. It was a good day.