On January 14, Virgin Orbit's "Above the Clouds" mission was successfully executed, and the company's first launch mission after the IPO was completed, and the satellites of three customers were successfully sent to the sky.
At 1:39 p.m. local time on Thursday, a Virgin Orbit Boeing 747 took off in Mojave, California. At 2:53, the launcher One rocket carried by the aircraft was successfully launched.
The rocket is 70 feet long and carries seven small satellites, including satellites from the U.S. Department of Defense, Spire Global, and two nanosatellites from SatRevolution in Poland. The satellites are scheduled to operate in orbit at an altitude of about 500 kilometers above ground.
During the ascent, Virgin Orbit said the rocket was operating normally. After the launch mission, Virgin Orbit rose 2.87% to $9.67 in late trading.
According to Bloomberg, Virgin Rail, founded by Richard Branson, plans to carry out five more missions this year, including two scheduled to be carried out in Cornwall, England, this summer, and a take-off mission from Japan in 2023. In addition, guam and Brazil take-off missions are also on the company's schedule.
Today, Virgin Rail is trying to catch up with Space X, the company Musk founded.
On the same day as the Virgin orbit "One Arrow Seven Stars" mission, Space X's second launch mission this year, "Transporter-3", achieved "One Arrow 105 Stars", successfully sending up to 105 satellites into space orbit one by one through the legendary Falcon 9.
So far, the interval between the two launch missions in Virgin Orbit is about 6 months. Clearly, the company needs to speed up the pace of launches to provide customers with more convenient space services. As a result, the company's CEO, Dan Hart, said that six launch missions are planned this year to speed up the rocket launch mission.
"Unique" launch method
Unlike many "new rocket forces", Virgin Orbit, which mainly provides launch services for small satellite operators, has a somewhat unique method of sending satellites into space.
Specifically, the company's LauncherOne rocket was not launched vertically from the ground, but was designed to take off from under the wing of a refurbished Boeing 747 carrier-based aircraft called Cosmic Girl. The plane will take the LauncherOne to an altitude of about 35,000 feet (10,668 meters) above the ground and then launch the rocket. LauncherOne then ignited its main engine and propelled its payload onto a predetermined track.
Virgin Orbit believes this method is much more flexible than traditional ground-based vertical launches.