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Virgin orbitThe latter’s name is no longer purely ambitious.
Of the society LauncherA rocket reached orbit today (January 17) on its second powered test flight, a mission called Launch Demo 2. And that’s not all: the rocket also successfully deployed 10 small cubesats, which flew via the NASA Nanosatellite Educational Launch Program.
“Payloads have been successfully deployed to our target orbit! We are so, so proud to say that LauncherOne has now completed its first mission to space, carrying 9 cubesat missions to low earth orbit for our friends @NASA. # LaunchDemo2, “Virgin Orbit announced via Twitter today. (One of the nine missions had two cubesats, so the total number of loft spaceships was 10.)
In photos: Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne rocket for satellite missions
Payloads successfully deployed in our target orbit! We are so proud to say that LauncherOne has now completed its first space mission, carrying 9 CubeSat missions to low Earth orbit for our friends @NASA. # LaunchDemo2January 17, 2021
The 70-foot-long (21-meter) two-story LauncherOne, capable of delivering up to 1,100 pounds. (500 kilograms) into orbit, took off from Mojave Air and Space Port in California today at approximately 1:40 p.m. EST (6:40 p.m. GMT; 10:40 a.m. local California time). The rocket left the ground under the wing of its Boeing 747 carrier plane, known as the Cosmic Girl.
This air launch strategy – which Virgin Orbit’s sister company Virgin Galactic is also using with its suborbital space plane, SpaceShipTwo – increases flexibility and responsiveness compared to traditional vertically launched rockets, Virgin Orbit representatives said.
Pilots Kelly Latimer and Todd Ericson took Cosmic Girl southwest, crossing the Pacific Ocean to the west of the Los Angeles area. About an hour after takeoff, at an altitude of about 10,700 m (35,000 feet), LauncherOne freed himself from the aircraft, then fired his first-stage NewtonThree engine to fly into space.
The NewtonThree successfully completed its three-minute burn, marking a milestone that LauncherOne failed to achieve on its first orbital attempt, the May 2020 Launch Demo mission. During this previous flight, a broken thruster line immediately after the onset of the first stage burn, terminating the test.
But today, LauncherOne has kept ticking boxes. The top stage of the rocket successfully separated and fired its NewtonFour engine as intended, and LauncherOne glided into orbit around our planet.
About 45 minutes after its first combustion, the NewtonFour again ignited, circularizing the orbit of the upper stage. Soon after, the top tier deployed the 10 tiny satellites, provided by eight different academic groups and NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley.
It was a huge achievement for Virgin Orbit, which aims to claim a significant share of the growing market for small satellite launches. This market is currently dominated by Rocket lab, whose Electron booster has been operational since 2018.
But the competition looks set to start heating up considerably, and not just from Virgin Orbit. For example, the 38-foot-tall (12-meter) California startup Astra Rocket 3.2 has reached space for the first time last month, during the company’s second orbital test flight. And several other companies, such as Firefly Aerospace and Relativity Space, will start piloting their own small satellite launchers in the near future, if all goes according to plan.
The above vehicles are all designed to offer rides dedicated to relatively small spaceships. This is not the only way such satellites can fly; they can also hitchhike as secondary payloads on large rockets like SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9. But these missions are suited for large primary payloads, so they typically don’t provide as accurate delivery for small overlapping satellites.
Mike Wall is the author of “Over there“(Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book on the search for extraterrestrial life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.
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