LauncherOne Launch vehicle

2021

First successful rocket launch with commercial satellites

At the end of June 2021, Richard Brand's Virgin Orbit successfully launched a rocket with commercial satellites into space five months after the first test flight. Seven satellites from three different countries were launched using a rocket that took off in the air from Virgin Orbit's modified Boeing 747 after leaving the Mojave aerospace port.

The carrier aircraft, modified by a Boeing 747 called Cosmic Girl, took off at 9:53 a.m. Eastern time and flew west towards the Pacific Ocean. Less than an hour later, at 10:47, a two-stage LauncherOne rocket 70 feet long separated from the plane and started its only engine to approach the edge of the Earth's atmosphere. On board were the first military satellite of the Netherlands, four small satellites from the US Department of Defense test program and the first two of 14 satellites for imaging SatRevolution.

For the first time, Richard Branson's company successfully launched a rocket with commercial satellites

The rocket reached orbit at 10:58 and launched satellites at about 11:27, completing a two-hour mission. Virgin Orbit, a subsidiary of Virgin Galactic for space tourism billionaire Richard Branson, calls this mission "Tubular Bells: Part One." The company plans to launch at least another rocket in 2021, CEO Dan Hart told reporters, but in 2022 the company expects a much tighter launch schedule. Hart explained that Virgin Orbit signed several deals after the January test flight.

Typically, space missions involve launching rockets vertically from the ground, but Virgin Orbit prefers to launch rockets from the air from a modified Boeing 747 to provide customers with a faster and more accurate way to put satellites into orbit. This method is especially attractive for companies that create cheap small satellites, which are becoming an increasingly popular sector of the satellite market as launch costs decrease.^[1]

Launch of the launch vehicle LauncherOne

In mid-January 2021, Virgin Orbit, part of the Virgin Group holding of British billionaire Sir Richard Branson, successfully launched a rocket into space from a Boeing 747-400 aircraft. The carrier rocket LauncherOne put group of the small CubeSat satellites to Earth orbit.

A converted civilian airliner took off in the Mojave Desert in California (USA). After about 50 minutes of flight, the rocket was dropped over the Pacific Ocean in automatic mode. After another 10 minutes, she put nine microsatellites into orbit.

The launch took place LauncherOne

The launch was not broadcast publicly, the company reported on its progress only in social networks. Virgin Orbit published a video of the launch of the LauncherOne from the aircraft.

Thanks to the LauncherOne system, Virgin Orbit can launch satellites weighing up to 500 kg into Earth orbit. The company hopes that in the future they will be able to carry out regular commercial launches.

For Virgin Orbit, this is the second attempt to start the LauncherOne. The previous one was undertaken on May 25, 2020 and ended in failure - shortly after the launch, the safety system for an unknown reason turned off the engines of the first stage and the rocket fell.

For several years, Virgin Orbit has been developing and testing its unique launch system, which includes the use of passenger liners. Using this technology, after starting the engine and separating the stage, the launch vehicle LauncherOne delivers the payload to orbit, while Cosmic Girl returns to land on the runway.

A similar scheme is used by another company from the Virgin group - Virgin Galactic. She developed a system of short passenger flights along a suborbital trajectory: the carrier aircraft takes off to a height of 15 kilometers and drops the cosmoplane, after which it turns on the rocket engine and rises to the space border at 100 km.^[2]

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