‘Straight Up’ success!
Virgin Orbit successfully launches satellites during first night mission
‘Straight Up’ success
"Virgin Orbit launched a rocket carrying seven satellites from California’s Mojave Air and Space Port early Saturday morning at 1:49 AM ET (10:49PM local), marking the small satellite launcher’s first successful night mission. The company brought the satellites into low Earth orbit with the help of its Boeing 747 carrier aircraft called Cosmic Girl, which had the LauncherOne rocket attached beneath one of its wings.
The mission called Straight Up after the chart-topping song from Paula Abdul's 1988 album "Forever Your Girl." That album was released by Virgin Records, another member of the Virgin Group - involved seven research satellites as part of NASA’s Space Test Program. Like its previous missions, Virgin Orbit propelled the satellites into space by having Cosmic Girl carry the LauncherOne rocket 35,000 feet above the ground, giving it a headstart before the rocket detaches and launches its payload into orbit. Virgin Orbit initially postponed the mission on Thursday after finding that its rocket propellant temperature was “slightly out of bounds.”
Congratulations to our team for completing another successful mission to space today! We deployed a total of seven customer satellites into Low Earth Orbit as planned. #StraightUp
— Virgin Orbit (@VirginOrbit) July 2, 2022
Virgin Orbit has made five launch attempts in total, but only failed once during its first test flight in May 2020. It has been on a roll since first reaching orbit in January 2021, deploying a set of satellites into orbit in June 2021 and completing yet another mission earlier this year. Virgin Orbit’s Straight Up mission is the company’s fourth successful flight to date.
Virgin Orbit is owned by the British billionaire Richard Branson, and isn’t to be confused with Virgin Galactic, the company’s separate branch for commercial spaceflight. The company went public via a SPAC (special purpose acquisition company) merger last year. While it has completed all its launches from Southern California so far, Virgin Orbit plans on taking off from Cornwall, England later this year."
ADDITIONAL FLIGHT INFORMATION
". . .All five of Virgin Orbit's liftoffs to date have originated from the Mojave Air and Space Port, but, as that comment suggests, the company plans to start launching from other locales soon. Indeed, Virgin Orbit is gearing up for a launch from Spaceport Cornwall in England. That mission, which will be the first-ever orbital effort from the United Kingdom, is on track to lift off in September or thereabouts, Hart said.
The seven satellites that went up on Saturday morning were a diverse lot.
> One of them, the shoebox-sized Adler-1, will study the space debris environment to help improve researchers' models. This little satellite will be operated by Virginia-based company Spire Global.
> The Polish company SatRevolution provided two spacecraft, called Stork-3 and SteamSat-2.
Stork-3 will join SatRevolution's Stork constellation of Earth-imaging satellites, while SteamSat-2 will test water-fueled thrusters developed by the U.K. company SteamJet Space Systems.
> Two other spacecraft are tiny cubesats manifested via NASA's Educational Launch of Nanosatellites program, or ELaNa.
One was developed by NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia and the other by researchers at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
The final payloads that flew on Saturday were research and development satellites sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense. They will conduct experiments in space-based communication and in-space navigation, Virgin Orbit representatives said. . .
Virgin Orbit launches 7 satellites in 1st night mission
"Virgin Orbit just aced its fourth mission in a row, launching seven small satellites in the company's first-ever night flight.
Virgin Orbit's carrier plane, a modified Boeing 747 called Cosmic Girl, lifted off from the Mojave Air and Space Port in Southern California on Saturday (July 2) at 1:49 a.m. EDT (0549 GMT; 10:49 p.m. local time) with the company's LauncherOne rocket tucked under one wing.
Cosmic Girl headed west and then southwest, eventually reaching a targeted zone west of the Channel Islands. The plane dropped LauncherOne at 2:53 a.m. EDT (0653 GMT),at an altitude of about 35,000 feet (10,700 meters). A few seconds later, the 70-foot-long (21 m) rocket fired up its first-stage NewtonThree engine, beginning to power its way to orbit.
That burn lasted three minutes. Shortly thereafter, the rocket's two stages separated, and the upper stage's NewtonFour engine lit up. The NewtonFour blazed for a total of six minutes over two separate burns, taking the seven payloads to their desired orbit, a circular path 310 miles (500 kilometers) above Earth. All seven satellites were successfully deployed there as planned, Virgin Orbit representatives said via Twitter (opens in new tab) at 3:56 a.m. EDT (0756 GMT).
It was the fourth consecutive successful launch for Virgin Orbit, following satellite-lofting missions in January 2021, June 2021 and January of this year . . "
RELATED
Cosmic carrier: Inside Virgin Orbit's Boeing 747
It is January 17, 2021. A Boeing 747-400 with a strangely familiar livery crosses the Pacific coast north of Los Angeles. Aboard are a special crew and a single VIP, but this was no president. Instead, the aircraft pulls off an unusual trick. Pitching to an angle no airliner would normally achieve, Cosmic Girl makes the first successful air launch of an orbital class, liquid-fuelled rocket. . .
Satellites used to cost millions and be car-sized, now cubesats can be closer in price to a brandnew car and can be toaster-sized. They use increasingly powerful, standardised microelectronics, constellations offering a dilution of risk and increased coverage. Civilian or military, the fields of positioning, timing, communications and observation are all underpinned by data and satellites.
This renaissance is now matched politically, the UK not alone in having a recently founded Space Command, the domain now considered akin to land, sea or air. There is an immense drive to create, use and sell orbital data services, hampered by a bottleneck in affordable, flexible launching. With NASA passing the baton to the private sector, there is no major incumbent and the market is considered wide open. The democratising effect of New Space represents ideas, not ideologies .
The 70ft LauncherOne rocket in place beneath Cosmic Girl's port wing
VIRGIN ORBIT/ GREG ROBINSON
LINK: https://www.key.aero/article/cosmic-carrier-inside-virgin-orbits-boeing-747
Duration: 1:39
Posted: Jun 30, 2021
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