It was a much anticipated orbit! After a first failure in May 2020,
Virgin Orbit's LauncherOne rocket successfully reached low Earth orbit
on its second flight on January 17, 2021.
The success of this mission validates the original formula adopted by Virgin Orbit.
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A successful mission in every way
Early afternoon US West Coast
Time on January 17, the Boeing 747 Cosmic Girl took off from the
spaceport in Mojave, Calif., Carrying the small LauncherOne rocket under
its left wing. An hour after the plane took off, the rocket separated
from Cosmic Girl, and the NewtonThree engine on its first stage
successfully engaged, propelling LauncherOne into space. After three
minutes of operation, the first-stage motor gave way to the second-stage
NewtonFour motor, which operated for almost six minutes.
At an
altitude of approximately 500 km, LauncherOne's payload deployed. Unlike
the May 2020 flight, which ended in failure just seconds after the
Cosmic Girl operated deployment, this second LauncherOne flight did not
carry a test ballast, but actual satellites. We understand all the
better what was at stake for Virgin Orbit during this flight!
In
total, LauncherOne has deployed around ten CubeSats, standardized
nanosatellites that are expected to represent a significant share of the
light launch vehicle market, which Virgin Orbit hopes to dominate in
the years to come. Launched under the auspices of NASA, these ten
nano-satellites were designed by eight different universities and an
engineering center of the US space agency. They take with them several
scientific experiments and various technological demonstrators.
Read also: What can a 'spy satellite' do?
The huge ambition of Virgin Orbit
Originally, LauncherOne was a
project of another subsidiary of the Virgin group, well known to Clubic
readers: Virgin Galactic. While the latter is working to develop a safe
and economical way to take tourists on suborbital flights to the borders
of space, the company announced in 2012 its intention to develop a
small orbital launcher.
LauncherOne was then to be dropped from a
high altitude from a WhiteKnight Two aircraft, a craft custom designed
for Virgin Galactic's SpaceShip Two manned spacecraft. Finally, in 2017,
the manned program and the orbital program split into two separate
companies.
Virgin Orbit signs several contracts with US
government agencies (including NASA) and private customers, and a former
Boeing 747 from the Virgin Atlantic airline becomes the rocket's new
carrier plane.
For the group, the ambitions of Virgin Orbit - and
of its commercial subsidiary VOX Space - are clear: to recover a
significant share of the light launch vehicle market, in particular from
government customers. To do this, Virgin Orbit relies on the
extraordinary flexibility offered by its unique architecture.
Source : Space News
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